Close Encounters 22
by chezchuckles
Summary: Win, Lose, or Die. Beckett goes down in the line of duty and Spy Castle must save her life, but he can't trust his father.
1. Chapter 1

**Close Encounters 22: Win, Lose, or Die**

* * *

****The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.****

-'A Farewell to Arms', Ernest Hemingway

* * *

_for sailsafe_  
_and everyone who can't get enough_  
_and of course jessie_  
_whose idea this was - blame her_

* * *

_ previously on Spy..._

_There was a burst of noise on the mic and a groan from his wife._

_And then Kate collapsed._

_Castle took the shot._

* * *

The shot was instinctive.

The woman's ivory coat starburst with bright red, a moment of surreal blood bloom. The earth halted to a stop. Someone screamed.

There was panic, but Castle was already thundering across the roof.

"Kate!" he called in to the mic. He flung open the access door, jumped the first flight, landed hard on his feet, pivoted, jumped the next flight. "Kate. Kate, baby, talk to me. Kate. Beckett, talk to me."

"I'm circling around," his father said tersely over the line.

"Fuck. Kate. Kate, talk to me. I need you to say something-"

"Shut the fuck up, Richard. It's an open line and someone's called the police."

He could hear them then, angry, wailing police sirens.

He had to get to his wife.

He'd shot Jolin. He'd shot the woman and Kate was unresponsive in Luxembourg Garden.

* * *

The rain was pouring.

Castle burst out of the stairwell door to the outside exit, vaulted over a movable metal barrier, ate up the long open distance to the benches before the pool. People were streaming the opposite direction, away, someone was over Jolin and pressing a jacket to the gaping wounds in her legs - it was a man - blanched face, shaking hands. Not a professional then, but a bystander.

Jolin hadn't brought back-up; she'd been alone.

Kate was a dark huddle below the bench.

Castle raced to his wife, falling to his knees before her, his hands ripping down the jacket's zipper even as he checked her breathing, looked for blood. "Kate," he hissed. "Kate, come on. Come on, don't do this."

No blood.

There was no blood.

"Someone shot - someone shot them," the man was choking out. Castle didn't turn to look, fingers pressing at Kate's neck for her pulse, her skin slippery with rain. It fell in his eyes, burning.

"Kate." He fumbled his other hand under her jacket and roughly patted her down, searching, his own heart throbbing in his fingertips. "Kate? Kate, what's wrong? Come on, baby, come on."

No entry wounds. No blood. But her pulse was weak, a mad thump and then a few breaths of nothing before he felt it again. Maybe it was him, just him, maybe it was the rain and his cold fingers-

"What's going on? Why is someone _shooting_-"

Castle jerked his head up. "Shut the fuck up," he snarled. It might have been in English; he didn't know. His fingers were cradling the back of Kate's neck, his other hand still skimming over her body searching for a gunshot, a knife wound, something that made _sense_. "Kate. Kate, come on. Wake up."

In his ear, he realized his father was urgently giving commands. "Richard, I'm at the southeast entrance. You've got local police heading your way."

"Something's happened to Beckett," he snapped. There was no blood, no entry wound, nothing should be wrong with her. Nothing should be _wrong_.

"You need to get out of there."

"Thank God, police are coming," the man said. "I'm going to wave them over-"

Her pulse was weak under his fingers, the rain was dripping in his eyes. His father was on the radio, yelling in his ear, but it didn't make sense. "Something's wrong-"

"Richard. Grab your wife and _get the hell out_."

Out? She was - this wasn't right. He cupped the side of her face and checked her pupils, normal reaction, pressed his fingers to her pulse again.

Not right. Not good. Wasn't right. Her skin was deathly cold, the mist on her eyelashes, her breath sounds so faint that it scared him. Kate.

"She's going into shock," Castle rasped. "There's something really wrong."

"They're over here!" Shouting. The good samaritan heading back to them, running police, weapons being drawn.

"Richard, _right now. _You need to move. You _have _to move."

Castle glanced up, saw the men coming this way, and he had to move. He scooped Kate into his arms, holding her tightly against his chest, and he rocked forward onto his feet. She was lifeless, her body heavy with rain and unconsciousness, and he struggled to move quickly, not sure he should, certain he must.

Had to get her out of here. Get her safe.

He began to jog, slogging through mud, trying to keep to the bare cover of the perfectly-sculpted park trees. The police were behind him, not far, shouting, there was the slap of his feet through mud puddles, the drag of her body against him, the strain of his muscles, the cold settling in.

"Over there!"

Fuck. He had to run, a jog wasn't going to cut it, he had to be better than this.

Kate's face was pressed against his shoulder, but he couldn't spare the time to look down and check on her. He could hear the sirens, the sound of the police in their heavy boots searching for him, and soon there would be mounted police on motorbikes as well, able to make chase.

"Richard."

"Where are you?" he panted into the mic.

"In the green van. I have you on my screen. Head towards your two o'clock. Pick up the pace or you won't make it."

Castle pushed himself, his muscles feeling the strain, legs burning. Kate was deadweight, so heavy like this. He had to keep putting a knee into her back to keep her from slipping right out of his arms, the rain making it almost impossible to hang on to her.

"Veer right, straight shot," his father said over the channel. "_Faster_, Richard. What the hell is wrong with you? You have to go faster."

His breath was ragged now, his lungs burning, drowning in rain.

He saw the van through the wrought-iron fence surrounding the park, saw it idling at the curb. The door swung open in the back, his father scanning the block, eagle-eyed.

Behind him, he heard the shout of discovery, the police after him. Then _stop, stop_, _police! _He was killing himself here, but he had to run faster, had to _be fucking faster than this._

Black was gesturing, perched in the back of the van, that cold fury in his ruined face and Castle sprinted for the park entrance. He barreled between a couple of joggers, heading for the open door of the van.

His lungs were burning, his arms were burning. He had to make it.

Black held out his arms for Kate.

"Fuck," Castle gasped. "No." Wasn't leaving her alone with Black. She needed help. Immediate help.

Momentum had Castle falling against the side of the van next to the open door, Kate still in his arms, and he lifted a booted foot to the running board, supporting her weight.

"Richard-"

"You drive. Get up there. Now. Go, go, go."

Black shot him a dark look but he scrambled inelegantly forward. There was no way in hell he was leaving Black in the back with his wife. He pushed Kate inside the van and crawled in after her, the vehicle already rocketing forward. He torqued, half on his side on the floor, and he caught the still-open door with his foot, kicked it shut just as the police hit the park exit.

Sirens were already starting up again, heading to cut them off.

"Go, go," he yelled to his father, trying to push himself up. He glanced out the back doors.

Police were coming after them, the cars screaming down the street, pedestrians jumping out of the way, staring, and the van skidded hard around a block, knocking Castle against the back of the front seat.

He got to his knees before Kate and cradled her neck, checked her pulse again.

Thready, weak. She was slick with sweat despite the temperature, but her skin was clammy and tight.

God, it wasn't good. Not good.

Sirens behind them.

"Hold on!" Black shouted.

They surged through a red light and raced forward, over a dip in the road that knocked him off his knees. Castle slammed into the van door, smashing his head hard against the metal, watched helplessly as Kate rolled hard, neck twisting. He groaned and crawled back to her, but he saw, suddenly, through the pulse of pain in his head, that his father had stowed a first aid kit.

He needed to stabilize her neck.

He jerked the kit out of the restraints, ripping it from the velcro and throwing off the lid. He found surgical tape and improvised a backboard with a length of PVC pipe from the rack of surveillance equipment, making sure her neck was still. He couldn't do much about the way the van was dodging the police.

"Richard."

"Shut up," he shouted. He hunched over Kate and checked her pupils, but they were still reactive to the flash of light coming through the front windshield. "Kate. Kate, _God_, what's wrong, what's happened?"

He checked her pulse again, closing his eyes to concentrate, time it. Rate was dropping. Her heart was beating in clusters, a handful at a time, long pauses in between. Not good. Fuck. Something had happened, _something_ had to have happened to her.

"We need a hospital," he called towards the front. "We have to lose these guys and take her to a hospital."

"We can't do that."

"Don't fuck with me," Castle snarled, his voice breaking. "I will shoot you and drive myself. Head for the hospital."

"You just shot a woman in a park, Richard. And then abducted her companion. It's all over the radio, along with eyewitness accounts of her color and build - a _sketch_ is being transmitted of your face."

"I don't care. She needs a hospital. It doesn't matter what-"

"It _does_. It matters. You think the Collective are going to take this lying down? You _shot_ her."

"Do you think I _care_?" he shouted. "Turn into a fucking hospital or you die. Do you understand me? I don't care about anything if she _dies_."

"We can't do that. Let me-"

"This isn't a discussion," Castle roared. He reached behind him for Kate's weapon and froze. It was gone. The piece she'd given him was gone. Fuck, fuck, he'd had it loose in his waistband, stupid fucking rookie movie, but the sniper rifle was here somewhere. Had to be.

Black jerked the van into a dark alley and gunned the engine, turned again into a parking garage and then stopped behind another car. Outside on the street they'd vacated, four police cars screamed by while they were idle, quiet.

Black started the van once more and crept forward, angling towards the exit of the parking garage.

Castle groaned. The sniper rifle was back on that damn rooftop and he'd left his own gun at the bed and breakfast.

He had no weapons.

Black knew it, didn't he? Castle nudged the van deeper into the parking garage instead of exiting, and they rolled slowly into a space.

"What are you doing?" Castle rasped, hunched over his wife. "She needs a hospital. She needs a _hospital."_

Black killed the engine. "If you dump her at a hospital and they run tests on her - what do you think they're going to find?"

Castle stared down at Kate, her bloodless lips, the fringe of blue in her cheeks. "I don't care-"

"They'll find those pills she's been taking, the altered chemistry. They'll make official reports and those reports will get back to the Collective and she will be dead. Or worse - in their hands."

"But she's not like me," Castle rasped. "She's not like me - it doesn't do to her what it does to me. She's not any good to them. The regimen doesn't work for her."

"God damn it," Black said. "She's _on _the regimen."

"I fucking _know_ that," Castle shouted. "What the hell-?"

"It's the regimen," Black said. "She's _still _on it, isn't she? I know she is, don't look at me like that. Is she nursing? Richard. Is she nursing him?"

Nursing? He wanted to smash his fist into Black's face. "That's none of your fucking business."

Suddenly his father was crawling over the seat and into the back with him, knocking him on his ass with a shove. "It's the regimen, you damn idiot. It's a fucking balancing act, and if she's nursing or not nursing it _matters._ What is she taking? Richard. Tell me _exactly_ what she's taking, how much."

"The pills. It's just the pills, the supplements. The nursing took all the nutrients out of her body and she broke her foot, calcium leached out of her bones, you don't understand-"

Black turned to him with a snarl. "Richard, focus. It's the pills. I've seen it before. Tell me exactly what her levels are."

Her levels. "She was _breaking_ her bones. She had to-"

"When the boy was a newborn. Right? That's when it happened, that's when it was bad, when he was nursing every few hours, am I right? But not now. You've been with me for three days. Not with the boy."

What did that have to do with anything?

"Richard, listen. The boy has had _none_ of this. If she's been taking those pills like he's been feeding every two hours, but he _hasn't_ been-"

"What are you _talking_ about?" Castle roared, gripping his father hard by his shirt.

Black shoved him back. "Mineral toxicity. Toxicity, Richard. I've seen this before. She's crashing, she's _crashing_, and you have to tell me right now exactly what she's taking so we can save her life."

* * *

The parking garage held one orange bulb midway down the row; it threw a harsh light over Black and made the ruined side of his face into a garish, stiff mask.

"What are you doing to her?" Castle rasped.

He'd been pushed out of the way when Black had climbed into the back, and he watched like a hawk as his father hunched over his wife. Black moved to the buttons of her shirt, and Castle growled and jerked forward, knocking his father away from her.

"I said, what the fuck are you-"

"Let me examine her. I need to know how far it's progressed."

"Examine her? Like _hell-"_

"Either I examine her, and I fix this, or she dies."

Castle paled and sank back on his haunches. _Dies_.

Black flicked his fingers over the buttons but it was such slow-going that his father gave up and just yanked. Castle flinched as the buttons were ripped off, his guts churning at seeing his father's hands close to her skin.

God, he was going to doing something very very stupid if Black touched her.

But Black was leaning over and listening to her breath sounds, hands hovering, and Castle clenched his fists, forced air into his lungs. _Or she dies, or she dies-_ Then his father moved to put his ear at her heart and he lost it.

He yanked his father off of her, an arm strangling the man's neck. "Get the fuck off of her. You don't touch-"

"You violent, undisciplined _ass._ You know what first aid looks like - damn it, Richard - you're choking me. You're choking - Richard, she's going to _die._"

Black jabbed his elbow into Castle's cheek and Castle groaned, falling back, knocking his head into the metal panel of the van. Stunned, head swimming, he missed the moment his father went back to Kate, instead found himself watching numbly as Black's hands palpated her abdomen. The strong hand over the weak, Black probed above her belly button, and then below.

Below.

Below the waist-

Castle groaned and shifted forward, his face hot, but Black turned savagely on him. "You think I want her alive? I don't. I _don't_. But if she doesn't live, then I don't either. Then _you don't either_. And that boy? That boy is lost."

Castle sat down hard on his ass, panting. "Don't - don't let her die," he rasped. "Don't-"

"I am trying to fucking assess her condition. Now sit there and shut up."

Castle stared, his chest so tight he was going to cry.

And then Kate began to seize. Her body jerked once violently, a tremor running through her right arm, a terrible sound coming out of her chest, her neck arching, and then the seizure had her.

"What - what's going on? Why is she having a seizure-"

"Hold her," Black said sharply. "Hold her head. Don't let her bite her tongue."

Castle crawled up, curled an arm under her chin and managed to get his fingers pressed on her teeth to keep her from clamping down. Black was rummaging through the first aid kit; he pulled out tubing.

_Tubing._

"What are you doing?" he rasped. Kate's seizure fell off abruptly, her body listless and blanched against the van floor. Her skin was like ice. "What's the tubing, Black, what are you-"

"We need to treat the toxicity. A solution of sodium bicarbonate. I can get the materials. But I need you to drive."

"Drive," he rasped. Leave her back here with Black?

"Drive. I need materials to do this."

"Do - do what?"

"She has an iron toxicity. Do you hear me? Iron toxicity from those pills. Among - probably - other toxic levels. But that at least is _something _I can do right now."

"From the pills," he rasped. "But she needed them. I don't understand." He'd _seen_ the levels. He'd seen his _son_, starving and skinny and too weak to _cry_ for them.

"No. She didn't need them - the _boy_ needed them. And if she's not breastfeeding him every two hours, Richard, then she is getting _too much._"

Castle croaked a protest, but he knew he had to get past the intimacy of his father discussing his wife's _nursing_. He had to. He had to explain in better detail; everything had to be made clear. "But James is still breastfed. He hasn't been weaned yet. We don't _want_ her taking the supplements, but-"

"You're not listening to me. You've told me how many milligrams, and I'm telling _you_ that's entirely too much for a woman of her size. The calcium alone would give her kidney stones, but the _iron_-"

Castle winced. "She said - ah, fuck. Fuck. She said once she had some pain, but then she never..."

Black gave him a long look, completely unimpressed.

He had dropped the ball. She'd had _warning signs_ and Castle had completely dropped the ball.

God, damn it. He had done this.

"What do we do," he rasped. "Tell me what you need."

"We switch cars here. I need a pharmacy. You need to drive so I can keep her stable, monitor her heart rate."

Castle reached out, fingers caught in her mud-caked hair, his throat closing up.

"Richard. We need a new vehicle. Hurry."

He got out of the van.

* * *

Hunting through the parking garage, Castle selected an older vehicle, a squatty Fiat with a hatchback, entirely too small for the three of them, but the seat could be laid down and the windows were tinted. Not as dark as he might like, but enough to obscure the backseat passengers - Castle wasn't interested in wasting time looking for something better.

It was a matter of thirty seconds to get inside and hotwire the car, the engine running. He went back to the green van where the sliding back door was still open, his father hunched over Beckett like a carrion bird, shuffling side to side suspiciously.

Castle swallowed back the urge to throw Black off, slam him into the metal side of the van. He needed Black, fuck it all; he needed this man. What Castle knew about complications from the regimen could fill a thimble, what Black knew could save Kate's life.

"Two rows down," Castle said, interrupting Black's study of his wife's prone body. Black glanced up at him and nodded, seemed to be ignoring the waves of hostility that Castle couldn't help aiming his direction.

"We should be on our way," Black said, waving a hand towards Kate.

Castle came in close and gingerly scooped his wife into his arms, cradled her as close as he could get. He was appalled at how his biceps were quivering.

Apparently, so was his father.

"You should be better than that," Black said, nodding to the obvious stutter of muscle as he held an unconscious Kate.

Castle ignored Black and carried Beckett from the van to the little Fiat, laid her out on the folded down backseat - it was harder than it should have been. She had at least stopped convulsing, but her breath sounds were bad, sounded like her lungs were laboring. Black opened the other passenger door and climbed awkwardly onto the backseat beside her.

Castle didn't like that, but they had no choice.

He pushed the first aid kit inside after them, and then he hurried back to the van and grabbed the mobile equipment, set it on the floor of the parking garage. He used the hem of his t-shirt to wipe down the van, door handles and window and side mirrors, the side of the van where he'd fallen, the inside where he had crouched over her.

His hands were shaking and it wasn't just exhaustion but anxiety. He didn't like leaving Kate alone with his father, a man who was just _looking_ for a chance to hurt her. But he had no choice, there were things that had to be done to safeguard them all, and ditching the van, grabbing the equipment was one of those things.

He hurried back to the Fiat, shoved the equipment in the floorboard of the front passenger seat, and then dragged himself behind the wheel. His knees hit the steering column with a painful smack, and he adjusted the seat back, something like cold fear and adrenaline knotting in his guts.

He should never have fucked around with the regimen. He should have just _taken_ it. Just taken the fucking pills and the shots, just shut his fucking mouth and done it.

She'd told him. She had told him, repeatedly, that it made her nervous when he fucked around with it, and he had arrogantly dismissed her claims, told himself he could handle it.

Sure, he could fucking handle it, but was he at _all_ mission ready? No. The plain truth of it was - no, he was failing her at every turn.

He glanced behind him to check the parking garage's exit, and he could see in the backseat where his father hovered over his wife. He'd already pulled out the breathing mask and was giving her oxygen. It was a small canister, so small, and they _had_ to get to a pharmacy.

Castle swallowed down that gut-eating fear and backed out of the parking space, the engine purring like a predatory cat. He kept his urgency in check and pushed himself towards self-control, discipline, calmly steering the Fiat to the exit.

He could do this; he had to do this.

When he got out onto the street, he saw blue lights in the rear view mirror back by the park, and he pointed them away, angled down a different street, taking care to go the speed limit.

He squeezed the steering wheel. "How is she?"

"Not good. Keep driving."

Castle grit his teeth and focused on the street, on getting Beckett what she needed, on the outcome he wanted. Visualize the positive outcome. See the end.

They had beaten worse. They had been up against governments and terrorists and his own damn father, against wolves and fire and nuclear material; they had overcome.

"Oh, shit."

Castle grunted and lifted his eyes to the rear view mirror, saw his father doing chest compressions.

"Oh, God," he cried. "Please don't-"

"Pull - pull over and help. Can't keep this up. Richard. I don't have the strength-"

Castle jerked immediately into a parallel parking spot, crunching the bumper of the parked car in front of him and vaulting over the seats and into the back. He took over chest compressions; his father moved against the door, obviously just fine.

Castle folded one hand over the other, pumped down against her sternum. Sweat burned into his eyes, or tears, and he stared down at Kate's white, mud-streaked face. "Come on, baby. Come on, Kate. Come on."

Forceful, fast compressions, his hands leaving her chest just barely with each lift. He couldn't look at Black, couldn't take his eyes off any possible flicker in her face. He didn't think about how he could be breaking her ribs, didn't analyze his father's call for 'help' when he was clearly fine.

"Drive," he growled to his father. "Hospital. We have to-"

"Hold on. Let me try something."

Castle glanced up and saw his father in the first aid kit. "Her heart needs defib-"

Black pulled a package from the kit and ripped the paper off of a long, thick needle.

Castle's hands stuttered and he jerked his attention back to Kate, to the chest compressions, counting in his head - but he was afraid. "What is that, what do you think you're doing?"

"Atropine. All I got. Intracardiac injection. It's all we can do, Richard."

"No. She could hemorrhage. This isn't-"

"I don't have adrenaline. If we don't do this-"

"Atropine only causes a _faster_ heart rate; it won't _restart her heart_."

"Let's hope her heart still beats."

Fuck, fuck. He couldn't fall apart. He couldn't. _Think. _

"This is our only option - this is _her_ only option, Richard."

He was being rushed; he was being conned somehow. This couldn't be right.

"Move aside, damn it. If she dies, everything is ruined. Let me do this."

Castle felt her chest under his palms, the vulnerable arch of her ribs, the clammy touch of her skin. God, mud was caked in her hair from when she'd collapsed below the bench, and her lids were nearly translucent with whatever terrible toxicity had brought her down.

"Richard."

He kept up compressions, unable to decide, unable to stop.

"Richard. Move aside."

He glanced up and saw the needle. It wasn't emergency room procedure; no one did that any more. Epinephrine could be put into a vein, given by IV; this wasn't _good_. This wasn't a good idea.

But it wasn't like they could start an IV.

"Her heart needs a kickstart until I can get the sodium bicarb in her. There is no other option, Richard. Move aside."

Castle swallowed hard, but he removed his hands; he dropped back. The seat of the Fiat was cramped with the three of them, even folded down flat, and for one terrible moment, Kate was completely alone, untouched, and she looked like death.

But his father moved fast, slid a palm over Kate's side, at her ribs, fingering the intercostal space under the band of her bra.

Castle was shaking.

Black pushed aside Kate's bra - fuck, when had Black unclasped the back? - and then his father swiped the bare skin with an antiseptic pad.

Castle sucked in a harsh breath and then Black plunged the needle into her heart.


	2. Chapter 2

**Close Encounters 22**

* * *

The needle.

Castle choked, staring at the quivering of the needle and the dark shadow of his father over her like a thing of nightmares. The needle and the slow plunge of the atropine into her body and releasing into her blood all conspiring with the grief sitting hollow and void in his chest.

She was dying.

She was dying in front of him and he could do nothing.

Black pulled the needle out carefully, oh, carefully; he withdrew the needle and it came out of her and the interior of the car was silent and watchful and held-breath until the sucked gasp of air went through her lips.

Kate's eyes sliced open, body went rigid.

Castle rocked forward on his hands and knees over her, lifted a shaky touch to her neck to feel with with his fingers for her pulse. She keened in breath like she'd been drowning.

"Kate?"

His father was pressing antiseptic to the needle mark, a dark presence at Castle's elbow.

"Kate, honey-"

Her eyes caught on his and held, pulsed for one shining, singular moment, and then her gaze fell away from him, eyes slipping shut. But under his fingers, her heart beat again.

"I have a pulse," Castle croaked.

"Good," his father rasped. In the voice was a similar grief that Castle didn't have the energy or space to parse. "Good. Okay. Okay. Richard. You need to drive. You need to drive us to a pharmacy-"

"Yes," he replied mechanically. A pharmacy. Stuff for an IV so they never - never - so they never had to do that again.

But still he hovered above his wife, staring down into the pale skein of her face, already unraveling. He wanted that moment back once more, her eyes open and locking on his. He wanted to hold on to it, hold her here.

Keep her.

"Rick," his father said urgently.

Castle leaned in and brushed a kiss to her left eyelid, and below it, he could faintly feel her eye moving, shifting, sliding as if with dreams.

If only it was a dream.

Castle lifted his head and crawled into the front seat, climbed in behind the wheel. His hands shook so badly that it took effort to get the Fiat in gear, but when he pulled out into traffic, a blaring horn and the fast sideswipe had him stomping on the brakes and cursing, the near-miss a shot of atropine itself.

_Pay attention_.

He checked his mirrors and then he pulled the vehicle back into traffic and searched for the green cross of a pharmacy.

* * *

It had never been so bewildering before.

The babble of language, the tower of conjugation and syntax, the layers of meaning that were encoded within sounds had always been Castle's home. He had grown up in the confusion of information, been taught to swim while all others sank. He was damn good at this - speaking the language, whatever it might be.

He was supposed to be fluent. He _was_ fluent, and that shouldn't hinge on the damn regimen.

But inside the pharmacy, searching for the chemical words in French, all of his faculty and facility with languages deserted him. He didn't know; he couldn't bring it back. It was just - gone.

A cosmic joke. Hubris laying him low. He had disdained the regimen, the serum and its effects upon his body and brain, and he had thought himself - if not a god, no - then at least a Titan.

He had thought himself invulnerable, but no one was invulnerable.

The necessary items weren't here. He was wandering the aisles, conspicuous, looking for something very specific to save his wife, and all the while wasting time she didn't have with his own failure.

He should never have fucked around with the regimen. Never have let _Kate_ fuck with it either. What if stimulating the super DNA of a developing fetus had only made it _necessary_ to keep supplying the child with regimen? What if it would have lain dormant all this time, Kate carrying the baby to full-term, James born just like any other normal delivery...

Maybe, at five years old, as it had been for Castle himself, the boy would have needed something. Maybe then. But not Kate, never Kate, who was now in the hands of John Black for saving, and Castle had no faith in that at all. None.

And still sodium bicarbonate didn't turn up, none of it was here, the necessary items weren't on the shelves, and his body felt wrung out, weak, fatally mortal.

He was wasting time, he was _killing_ time.

Castle returned to the Fiat parked a block down. Empty-handed. He felt sick; it was rising up in his guts, just how worthless he was to her right now, when she most needed him.

His father stared at him.

"I couldn't - find - the things on the list-"

The wave of absolute fury that washed over his father's face and flooded his eyes would have once inflamed Castle, would have been like a vicious shove, pushing him up out of the mire of his failure and securing him on the dry land of righteous indignation (_did you expect that a boy should be able to do this?_ he had screamed back once).

But he wasn't eight years old and standing on a stump in the backyard in the freezing winter, fury so cold in him he couldn't even cry any longer. He wasn't seventeen and dropped in Guangzhou with a rudimentary understanding of Cantonese, wishing like hell he'd been paying attention when his father had been talking about gang markings.

He was a damn grown man and his wife was dying in front of him and he couldn't do this one simple thing. He was a broken machine, but - even worse - he was a wreck of a partner too.

The shame and weight of furious grief must have showed vividly on his face because instead of the vitriol he expected from his father, the tongue-lashing for his failure, Black only shut his mouth and climbed precariously out of the Fiat and took the paper from Castle's hands.

He walked down the sidewalk towards the pharmacy without a word at all.

But he didn't need words. Castle knew, and he was rebuked by the thin, crumpled form of his wife in the back of the Fiat.

He had and was failing her. Monumentally. Incrementally. Failing her.

He crawled inside and shut the door, huddled near Kate's head and drew her body into his arms. Black had injected the last of the atropine through a vein, but they would hopefully get an IV started soon. This cure of Black's would have to work, the charcoal through a tube down her stomach, or else they had nothing.

Charcoal seemed too little, too late.

She had received twice-over the fatal dose of iron in the last week, but here she was. They'd decided to wean James as soon as possible because the side effects seemed too great a price to pay, but they hadn't envisioned this - the delicate balance needed, the so very shaky line between what Kate needed and what James needed.

James.

Castle bowed over his wife. Bowed so low their foreheads touched and he felt his tears dripping off his nose and touching her cheeks.

She was breathing. Shallow, like it was an effort, but breathing.

He turned his face away from hers to keep from drowning her.

* * *

Castle drove them out of Paris while Black hunched over his wife's body in the back of the Fiat, unrolling thin tubing and preparing ingredients. Sodium bicarbonate to reduce the guts' absorption of iron, though it didn't feel like enough to Castle, and having Black be the one to do it just wasn't - wasn't okay.

Black would have to get the tube down her esophagus and _not_ her trachea, and be damned sure about it, and that made Castle so violently heartsick that he could barely pay attention to his driving.

But he did, he had to. He checked himself and he kept his eyes on the road, traveling out of the city limits, though the landscape didn't change. Everything looked the same, one section of Paris seamlessly blending with a neighboring suburb, more office buildings coming up on his left, the train tracks to one side, old and crumbling buildings beside shiny windowed affairs.

A lot of graffiti, violent colors of spray paint, tags in cryptic gang signs that didn't mean much in French, even less in English as his brain tried to translate. _Rilo_ was prolific, it seemed, and someone who fancied himself an artist - a black raven with a camera for a head, as if surveillance was the enemy.

"Richard, it's no good," his father called up to him. "Pull over somewhere quiet. I can't be steady while you drive."

Castle's heart stuttered but he obediently exited the interstate onto a street that would, he remembered, eventually lead them into Versailles, which might be an ideal place to hunker down, hide out from whatever Collective forces came after them.

He just didn't know; his father hadn't been forthcoming on who might be in the area, who Jolin might have surrounding her for her own security. But Castle couldn't take chances.

He slipped the Fiat up and down little sidestreets, taking an ambiguous route because he didn't _have_ a plan anyway, and finally he parked in the shadow of a monument - a statue to one of the Louis, an ornate obelisk that rose in the center of the park. Only a handful of tourists or dog-walkers. But it was dark, nearly full dark, and the car was away from security lamps.

"What do you need?" he asked his father, pulling the keys from the ignition. He had trouble turning to look, unwilling or maybe just plain terrified to look.

He didn't want to see what he didn't want to to be true - his wife was dying, his wife in John Black's hands.

"Hold the flashlight," his father said, carefully. His words were commanding, but they were no longer derisive, not even condescending. It was their old patterns, his father ordering with confidence and Castle doing what needed to be done because it was the mission and Black had always been team leader.

He crawled into the backseat and held the flashlight poised to one side, took the second pen light from out of the first aid kit, creating two sources of light and hopefully no deceptive shadows.

Black had tilted Kate's head back, poised over her opened mouth. Her skin was papery and white, lips chapped badly, eyelids so thin he could see her veins through them.

"Stop shaking," his father snapped.

Castle's nostrils flared but the anger kept away the grief and he did his damn job.

Black began threading the tube, using a magnifying lens and not much else, testing with his finger for gag reflex, pushing the tube down into her esophagus. He had a guiding wire, something he'd created out of pieces from the pharmacy, and Castle kept his eyes on the flashlights in his hands and not on his father.

Not on Kate. He couldn't. It would crush him - destroy him - in ways that neither of them could afford.

He had to trust that his father was doing his best to save her, or the man forfeited his own life.

But Castle didn't trust him. That was the plain, cold fact. He didn't trust Black with her, at all, not with her breaths or her body or her mind, but Castle had absolutely no recourse. None.

For all of their sakes' - for James, Jim, her boys and his brothers in arms, Jenny and Sarah Grace, Lanie even, and the Regimen Medical Team that they had worked so diligently to hide and keep safe - all of those people relied on this moment, this ungodly, terrible man to be, for once, exactly what he said - on Castle's side.

He prayed it was true; he prayed this worked.

* * *

"When she vomits, hold her up on her side. Swipe your finger in her mouth to be certain she's not choking on it." Black gave him a brisk nod and slammed the door shut.

Castle cradled Kate against his chest in the back of the Fiat as his father got behind the wheel. Black didn't have the strength to keep Kate on her side and propped up, but for the first time, Castle was nervous not to have his father's immediate assistance, to be alone back here, the one responsible.

Black began to drive, back onto the interstate and out through the suburbs, further from Versailles. Paris had fallen behind them; Castle could see the spire of a church, the closely-packed houses made of bright stone in the darkness, the terra-cotta tiles of old roofs, and now the green of wildflowers that came up early in the spring.

And then even that was in the distance, and they were going laboriously up a rolling hill, northward, and the trees obscured the ribbon of interstate.

Kate was heavy in his arms, her body loose, rolling as they curved the side of the hill.

He hoped this was the right thing to do. All of it. Everything. He hoped the decisions he hadn't made, the things his father had done - he hoped that had been right. He didn't know; he couldn't know. But she was dying. He knew that. He knew they didn't have much hope.

He glanced down at his wife and clumsily stroked the hair back from her cheek, feeling more like a fumbling ape than a man. He was dumb and awkward and he was too brutish for the things happening. Her hair was clumped together with mud and it broke off and fell in his lap. He brushed it off her cheeks.

"Kate." As if he could call her back.

There'd been no more convulsions, no seizures, and Castle had stopped insisting on a hospital - for now. His father was driving them to a place he knew, a working clinic; they could get what they needed and balance her levels, hopefully. They could put in a line and get IV fluids and get her stable, that was the plan. It wasn't very concrete, it didn't hold much out for hope.

Castle wanted only to hide out with his wife somewhere and not come out until she had opened her eyes and said his name, until she was with him again. But that was foolish, and worse, it would take her away from whatever regimen help his father could offer.

The regimen. He despised it, but he needed it. He loathed the whole damn program, and he'd ignored her every attempt to push it on him, but he'd failed her today without it. The super had worn off at the worst possible time, and he'd not been what she had needed, still needed.

"Never again," he promised her. "I'll do whatever you say." He pressed his hand to her cheek, his numb fingers warmer than her own skin, mud streaked at her neck and still matting her hair. "Kate. I'll do whatever it takes, more than bare minimum. I swear, I swear."

She was so pale, so chilled even as he hugged her tighter, and her pulse was a fluttering thing, a moth beating against the window to get at the light. He kept her close to be sure she was still breathing, and he smoothed the hair behind her ear, over and over, hoping she felt it, somewhere, felt him, came back to him.

He bent down and touched his lips to her forehead. "Stay with me, Kate."

* * *

"Was she supposed to throw up?" Castle called anxiously. Her body was clammy and heavy in his arms, like a woman turning to wax, and he stared at the thin, pinched membrane of her eyelids. "She hasn't, hasn't yet. Was she supposed-"

"No," his father said sharply. "No. Richard. Let me concentrate. These country roads. My Dutch isn't perfect."

They'd moved entirely out of France, north into Belgium, the road signs were French and Dutch, Black was being calculated in his speed, moving fast.

Castle sat in the backseat with Kate pulled against his chest, her head in the crook of his arm. His heart still took awkward leaps with every hitch to her breathing or twitch of her limbs, and her own pulse seemed to drag.

Like the effort of it was almost too much, like it was such hard work to keep her alive.

"Why did you say when she throws up-"

"Richard."

He lifted his head to see his father glaring at him in the rear view mirror of the cramped Fiat. He didn't care. "Is she supposed to throw up? Just tell me what I should be doing for her. Just-"

"You don't _want_ her to throw up, Richard. But the solution is potent. It should pass through her system, drawing the toxins from her intestines as it goes. So the more that's in her, the better off she is."

"Okay," he said quietly. "Okay."

"In two hours we'll force-feed her more of it."

Force-feed her. The tube carefully cleaned with sanitizer and rolled up, replaced in the plastic pharmacy bag. Castle glanced down at his wife, the parchment skin, bleached of color and left only with the severe lines of her bones jutting into space. He cupped her jaw and stroked back to her ear, his guts twisting at the damp stiffness to her skin.

"Richard."

"Yeah."

"If anyone could... it would be her."

Castle sucked in a ragged breath but he didn't look up. "My Dutch is good," he gruffed. "What do you need from me to get where we're going?"

* * *

Between the two of them, Black calling out a terse command and Castle giving jerky responses as his eyes cut to the sign for a translation, they finally navigated into the heart of Belgium. English words were plenty, signs and restaurants, though enough Dutch persisted to even confuse the French available. A blur of signs in a jumble of language.

It wasn't countryside so much as a city crammed up against another city. Castle darted looks to the road and back to Kate, tensed for the moment when she'd need him, but she didn't.

She didn't need him.

He didn't know if that was a good sign, but he didn't have a single thing that would help her anyway. The atropine was gone, the solution was just going to have to do its job; it was all wait and see until the clinic.

Black had exited the interstate long before and now took a cobblestoned road off the main. They stopped at a crosswalk for pedestrians, and then nosed the car into a narrow alleyway behind a pale brick building with pink brick flourishes. The stone had concrete plastered over its walls which rose on either side of them, and the alley narrowly led into what looked like a former convent. There was a wrought iron gate, but it stood open.

It was a medical center, a clinic or Red Cross, he thought, and his father pulled up at the back doors, wide and wooden, smooth with age. Iron handles, huge, were set into the doors, but he could see signs of more modern industry - a pushbar and a modern lock.

"You're going to have to go in," Black said quickly, turning halfway in the seat. "We can't leave her here, not even here, but we can get supplies. You'll have to do it."

"No."

"You have to do it. They know my face. My ruined face. I can't get in and out like you can."

"I'm not leaving her alone with you while I-"

"Richard. Be reasonable."

"I'm not leaving her-"

"Son, _fuck_," Black swore, slamming his fist into the steering wheel. He gestured wildly to Kate. "This is what she does to you. Makes you into a damn five year old all over again. I trained you better than this. Assess the situation, make a plan, and _act_. Throwing a fit in the car is for a child, not a grown man."

Castle wanted to cry.

Fuck, he was acting like a five year-old. He wanted to cry; it was a thing in his chest, a beast tearing out. "Fine. Make - make me a list."

"You'll have to steal what we need. More atropine, a couple saline IV bags - we can make our own solution once they run out." Black had already pulled a scrap of paper - a receipt - from his jacket pocket and was making out the list. "A catheter - needle, port, all of it. Don't forget the accoutrements, Richard. The whole kit-"

"I understand," he gritted out. He did know what it took; he'd done medic training in the Army, he had often patched up the agents under him in the field. Kate, even. But Castle resisted the _glee_ his father had when talking about their mission. Because it wasn't a mission - it was his _wife._

She'd be comatose for a week, at least, Black went on. Maybe for two weeks. Catheter and heart monitor and IV saline and making up their own bags of nutrients... it was quite a lot of medical paraphernalia and he was supposed to walk out with it. "How is this place not going to notice?"

"That's your _job_, Richard. You are a fucking CIA operative. Act like it."

His nostrils flared; he was seriously going to hit the man, but his father jabbed a finger towards Beckett.

"Do you love her?"

Fuck.

He yanked open the back door and jumped to the dirt-packed cobblestones, ready for action.

Black rolled down the window and thrust the list at his chest.

* * *

His Dutch was good, his French was better. The glossolalia that had accompanied his foray into the pharmacy near Versailles had abated, and Castle slipped into the Red Cross clinic, mingled with the staff.

He found a carrying bag in the employee locker room, a duffle, and he helped himself to that, plus scrub pants that had been freshly laundered, starched into a punishing stiffness. He hadn't been wearing a jacket, and the t-shirt went just fine with the scrubs; he stuffed his mud-splattered jeans into the duffle.

After some careful prowling, he found the sterilized packages of catheter kits, pulled down three or four to be sure. Antiseptic wipes, gloves, needles. These supplies Castle culled from various surgery rooms to keep a nurse from detecting the massive theft.

He discovered the drug locker, pick-pocketed the keys, and let himself inside during a code - an emergency he'd arranged with a convenient disconnecting of certain leads to a heart monitor. The old man was in no real trouble, but it gave Castle time to open up the duffle bag and dump stuff into it.

IV saline bags; he made certain of those. And the nutrient-rich formulas that weren't bagged yet, simply vials on the shelf to be added in. Glucose. He racked his brain to think fifty steps ahead, into a future he wasn't sure they'd see, to a condition his wife might be in and what she might need.

They were in a smaller city outside Charleroi, off the E19, north toward Brussels. He didn't expect them to travel much further than this, not into a major city when the Collective would be looking for them. Which might mean he was pissing in his own pool, stealing so much and so noticeably from the clinic. But if he had to, Castle would drive to Liege to get what Kate needed.

He didn't want to have to leave her to Black, but he would do what needed to be done.

No more throwing fits in the car like a child.

Castle slung the duffle over his shoulder, the stolen medical ID clipped crookedly to his shirt so that the picture was twisted at an angle. Just enough to say he'd been in the showers and had gotten out fast, in a hurry to leave after his shift.

He walked out of the clinic. Just like that; he walked out.

No one stopped him, no one asked.

He found the Fiat two blocks down, and he realized his hands had been shaking the whole way, certain his father had taken his chance, run for it, run with Kate, or worse - dumped her out on the road and simply vanished.

But he hadn't. He was still here, and Castle crawled into the backseat and immediately to Kate's side, pressing his warmth to hers, not saying a word.

Black put the car in gear. He didn't praise the work, or the performance of it. "I have a place," he said, and that was good enough for Castle.

* * *

It was just beginning on dawn when the Fiat pulled into a parking garage and Black turned the engine off. Castle roused, realized he had dozed against his will, and fought off the shame. No point to it now, no point in being a broken human when the machine was what his wife needed.

"You slept," his father said, coldly, chillingly aware.

"Briefly," he admitted. He had learned to snatch sleep in the field, but doing it now, on their trek north, meant that Castle's body was failing him, not that he was using approved tactics.

"Then you can carry her all the way upstairs," Black said. It was shockingly conciliatory. It was also punishment. There would be a stairwell, and numerous flights, he had no doubt, and Black was going to enjoy it.

Castle found that he didn't mind; he _deserved_ it. He'd let his body grow weak. Hadn't Russia been enough of a warning? He'd used all of his reserves, the whole force of his will and the considerable power of his regimen-enhanced effort to simply _find_ Beckett on the Russian steppe.

Getting them home had often felt impossible, overwhelmingly against them. But they'd done it; he had done it with the solid warmth of her at his back, knowing he had to. But he had _just_ been deluged with regimen to heal his leg.

Today - one day - of exerting energy above the norm, and he was falling asleep in a car his _father_ had control of.

Black was getting out of the Fiat, painstakingly, in some obvious distress after having sat behind the wheel for hours tonight. Castle should have been better than this, should have been paying attention.

He tried to make up for it now. "Is this a CIA safe house?"

"It is not," Black said. _Make no mistake_.

"What floor?"

"Fifth. One room. And a kitchen attached. Bathroom. Tight quarters."

A condo space then, a place Black had known of, maybe even one of the regimen depots Black had stationed across the globe.

Castle had already pushed open the back door of the car, and he crawled out with the duffle bag of medical supplies over his shoulder. He'd started an IV line into the back of Kate's hand, not wanting to attempt the crook of her arm while in transit, and so he hung the IV bag from the shoulder strap of the duffle, digging the metal hook into the material.

He reached in and gathered his wife's body close to him, against his chest, and then he flexed long abused muscles and angled her out of the car.

Black was waiting, eyeing him, definitely sizing him up. Castle didn't like the idea of his father trying to take him, of his father figuring out what his chances might be, and so he made his face completely blank, impassive, didn't let it out how much it ached in his joints, holding her limp weight.

"Follow me," Black said then, turning and heading through the concrete parking garage toward whatever accommodations he had in mind. Castle followed - there was no other choice - and he took even breaths, fooled himself into believing that her weight was nothing, not awkward, that he was the same strong man he'd always been.

"When we get up there," he started, appalled to hear the breathlessness in his voice. He couldn't mask it though. He needed to breathe. "Do you have what it takes to save her?"

"I don't know," his father said.

"Even if we get rid of the toxicity - her levels will be off. Imbalanced after treatment, won't they?"

"Most likely."

Castle swallowed roughly and followed his father through a metal door, not marked, and to the first flight of steps. "But you'll have serum up there, won't you?" The cords of his neck strained and he grit his teeth, kept talking. "This is a depot for your program, isn't it? That's why you've brought us here. You'll have serum and supplements up there."

"Do you really want me to inject her with that?"

"No," he rasped. Moment of truth. He had to let his father know how bad it was. "Not for Kate. For me."

Black turned in the harsh light of the single-bulb that shone from the second floor landing. His face was in complete shadow, but Castle knew that his own stood out quite clearly.

"The regimen, yes. That's upstairs." Black wasted only a moment stalling there before he turned and strode more quickly up the stairs, his climb not as decrepit and shaky as he'd made it out to be in the beginning.

But that made sense. Black had reason to be energized, more willing to help them. His father was, after all, getting exactly what he'd always wanted: his son falling in line.


	3. Chapter 3

**Close Encounters 22**

* * *

Castle had just struggled up the last step and into the hallway of their floor when he felt the twitch first against his chest.

_God, not a heart attack_.

But it wasn't his heart, wasn't pain or the excruciating climb up the stairs.

It was Kate.

"She's having a seizure," he gasped, dropping to his knees in the middle of the hall. "Black, she's seizing-"

"Up, up, up," his father yelled. "Get up. Inside."

Castle was breathing hard over Kate on the floor as her body tremored, small ripples of disquiet, her jaw clenched, and he wasn't sure he _could_ get up.

Black had jammed the key into the lock of a door at the end, near the far stairs, but now he came back to them, gesturing. "Not out here. Inside, get her inside, damn it."

Castle gathered her up, struggling to get to his feet, her body like stones shifting around under too-loose skin, but he did it, he managed it, he was lurching down the hall towards Black. His shoulder bounced off the door and he stumbled into absolute darkness, and had to pause there, breath rasping, unable to see, he couldn't see.

Black shoved on him, inside, inside, and he tripped over something metal that went clanging and skittering, and Black cursed him and the door shut, a key scraping, a lock turning. Castle felt Kate against him, a gurgle of a breath and the rigid jerk of her muscles.

"Where do I-"

"Here, right here," his father said, and Castle was following a voice he hated into the darkness.

He slammed hard into something else, unseen, more metal clattering, but this was substantial, and it had smacked his shin pretty good.

"Quiet," his father hissed. "Quiet, put her down. Get a light. Let me look at her."

He didn't want that, his whole being revolted at that - _get a look at her_ \- but he heard groans coming from her, an unsteady and persistent noise in her chest that couldn't be good, couldn't at all be good, and he hit the edge of that metal post again and realized it was a frame, a cot, a place to start.

Castle lowered her down, feeling his way with elbows and hands, finding Black's helping guidance down, his skin crawling at the contact of their fingers over Kate's shoulder, her thigh, the bile rising in the back of his throat.

"Put her down, put her down," his father breathed, and in the darkness like this, intimate, too knowing, Castle could barely keep from strangling him.

Kate was on the cot, roughly, and he heard his father muttering to himself, could practically _feel_ Black's hands going over her, and he tried to figure out how to find light. A light. He needed to see.

"Where's-"

"I need the damn light, Richard."

"Where _is it_?"

"Foot locker by the door. You fucking kicked it coming in. You find it."

He strained to recall the direction it had taken, that metal thing coming in the door, and now that the pitch black had abated, he could see the faint seam of light that broke in at the poorly-patched window - cardboard and nailed two-by-fours. He shifted away from the cot, useless, completely worthless to her now, and he crawled forward on his knees, hands outstretched, searching for light.

He found the box, the metal foot locker, and his fingers hurt prying it open, the latch stuck from years of disuse. He got it open and the shadows played havoc, made it impossible to find tools inside this thing.

"I need scissors, the tubing. Where did you put the first aid kit?"

Castle blanked for one terrible second. And then memory rushed in at the same moment as he put his hand on a flashlight. "I dropped it in the hall," he croaked.

"Damn it, Richard."

The light flared on and he turned, tossed it to his father so that the man had to stop touching his wife. It was stupid, and it might very well have been reckless of him, but Black half-caught it, drawing the light against his chest, and his hands were no longer skimming Kate's ribs.

Kate. Whose shirt was open and bra unclasped, Kate who was mud-splattered and blanched white beneath the mud, Kate who was lying unconscious and alone on a cot and needed help, help from the man who wanted her dead.

At least the seizure had stopped.

"I need the first aid kit and our supplies. Richard. Go."

Castle got to his feet in the meager light and headed swiftly for the door, felt something smack hard into the back of his head. He turned, rage boiling, and Black gestured towards his feet.

"Key. To get out."

He bent down and scooped the damn key ring off the floor, found one that looked like it would fit the lock - the deadbolt locked from the inside - fuck. Castle shoved it into the lock and twisted, and the thing popped and shivered and he could force the door open.

He saw it: first aid kit, tumbled to the floor right down the hall. The equipment from the van that they'd shoved into the stolen Fiat was in a bag a little ways back, which Black had apparently dropped in his hustle to get them inside.

Castle went back for both and pulled the straps over his shoulders, saddlebagging them, heading back to the cramped and dark apartment. He hurried now, realizing he had stupidly left his father alone with her, alone with her, and he pushed through the door.

Only to see his father hovering over her with a knife.

"Fuck!" he shouted, barreling inside and launching himself at Black. His father went down, the knife clattered, Black kneed him hard in the solar plexus so that his breath caught and wouldn't come.

"Get off me, you fool. Get _off_."

"Don't-" he wheezed, coughing, rolling with Black on the floor. The bags were tangled. "Don't you dare-"

"You're going to crush what meds we managed to get, you complete and utter fucking idiot. Get _off of me_."

Castle felt the elbow against the side of his head and he was not-super enough to see stars, rainbow stars that flared behind his eyes. He dropped to one side, breath laboring, to his knees now, and then he struggled out of the bags, releasing them, moved for Kate.

Mud splattered her cheek and neck in places he'd missed with the little hand wipes, but no blood. No blood. What-

"Stop overreacting and get out of my way," Black snarled. He was shoving Castle aside, and that's when he saw it, when he _saw_ what Black had done.

His father had hacked at her hair.

"Why?" he croaked, horror clawing up his throat.

"Get over it. The mud has clumped it together and her hair keeps tangling in the line - we don't need an infection on top of everything else. So move, Richard."

He felt himself being shoved back and his father standing there and the knife gone somewhere but her cut hair was in a twisted, knotted clump beside the leg of the cot. Castle reached for it as if in a fog, felt the matted pieces under his fingers.

And then he lifted his gaze and saw her hair was maybe at her shoulders now, inexpertly butchered, but not - not - no longer plastered at her neck with mud, no longer streaking her skin with dirt.

Black had cut her hair, just like that.

It felt like his father had cut out his heart.

* * *

Castle sat in the darkness of the apartment, no gas, no electricity, his muscles twitching with leftover adrenaline and lactic acid. He'd pushed the cot against the far wall just to keep her out of the middle of things. Some privacy. Something, he didn't know. The IV bag was hanging from a nail in the plaster over her head, but her skin was luminous and ghostly in the lack of light.

Black had left to deal with the power, get things connected again, and Castle had his chin on his hands, staring at Beckett, not seeing much.

Her hair was still matted in the back where she'd fallen in mud under that bench, mud had splattered her neck and under her jaw. He had tried cleaning it, now that they were here, now that there seemed nothing more he could do.

Black had hacked at it raggedly, haphazard. Castle had scooped up the tangled, limp thing and had thrown it in a metal canister that they could use for trash. The needle went in there, the tubing they'd used already down her throat, and then that hank of hair.

He was going to cry.

Fuck, that wasn't a good idea.

Castle rubbed his hands briskly over his head, tried to get himself together. Think. He needed to think. He couldn't help seeing the harsh line of her hair against her neck, that vulnerable skin, how close the knife had been, how - just like that - Black had chopped it off, unilateral decision. _It was in the way._

Castle reached out a tentative hand, two fingers extended, brushed experimentally over the cut ends of her hair. Sharp, bristling, still muddy and knotted in that spot.

He didn't know what to do, what was right.

Help. He needed help; she needed help and he had no idea where to, what the right choice was, where-

Wait. Boyd. _Logan._

He should have called Logan _hours_ ago.

He fumbled to his knees beside the cot, found her leather jacket on the dusty floor below. The phone, in the front pocket, just a burner from the Office, but it would work, it would connect him.

He dialed the number from memory - at least he had that, he could fucking well remember the Regimen Medical Team number - and the phone clicked and paused as it went through relays and finally to that lonely skyscraper office.

He sucked in a shaky breath when someone picked up, then heard the questioning answer.

"Castle?"

"Yeah," he croaked out, so damn relieved that Logan had answered. His head bowed to the cot near Kate's hand. "Yeah, it's me."

"Better be. You're the only one with this number."

They'd done that on purpose. Kate's number to the team went through a different system, connected directly with Boyd. But Castle had Logan. Just how it had worked out.

"She's bad. Logan, she's crashed - while we were on mission-"

"Wait, what? What are you talking about?"

He sucked in another breath, tried to marshal his thoughts, be rational, _explain._ "I don't have a lot of time - she doesn't have a lot of time, Logan. She crashed, collapsed during a mission. I'm fucking relying on my _father_ here to save her life."

"She crashed. She collapsed. Is that what you're telling me? She's nonresponsive?"

"Pupils contract to light," he gruffed, swallowing and lifting his head. "She's breathing. Heart rate isn't steady. We did an intercostal-"

"Holy shit," Logan croaked. "You put _what_ into her heart?"

"Atropine. All we had on hand. Worked. She jerked and her heart rate came up again, but I don't know what to do. Black said toxicity-"

"Toxicity," Logan repeated, and God, that sounded terrible. "What are her levels?"

"Haven't been able to run a blood test. Just got - got set up. Waiting on power."

"Power? Set up? You're not at a hospital?"

"No. Can't. I - shot someone. She might be dead. I don't know. I shot our contact and now the Collective is on our ass and Kate is - she's part of this - but I don't know that she'll make-"

"Hang on, stop. Just stop. Okay? Let me think."

"Black is coming back soon. He's hooking up the power. We'll push charcoal down her throat again and-"

"Fuck, _toxicity_. She's been taking the pills to nurse, right? She's _been_ nursing, right?"

"Yes. But-"

"_But what_?"

"But we're weaning him. James. We're - he's nursing less and eating rice cereal and bananas-" His throat closed up and he squeezed his eyes shut, had to breathe.

"Boyd made him bananas; he told me he made him bananas. Damn it. I didn't think - I didn't _connect_ it. We can't keep doing the program like this, Castle. Nobody informing - okay, okay, moving on. We're just going to have to move past that. Tell me how much, how many milligrams-"

"I don't know exactly," he said. "She said - it was like an off-the-cuff remark to me earlier. She said she'd taken more of the pills so that she could express milk before we left, but that it didn't seem to work, and that it was-"

"She took _what_, what did she take? How _many_ more pills?"

"I don't know!" Castle caught it at the last second, lowered his voice. "I don't know. I wasn't thinking of it like that. But she took more than one pill a day, that's most likely. For a week before we got over here."

"Was she complaining of headaches or aching joints? Did she seem listless or have muscle tremors-"

"She doesn't ever complain, Logan," Castle gritted out. But. But. Shit. She _had_ been shaky, and he'd chalked it up to fear with Black in the vicinity. Damn it. "Maybe. Maybe so - Logan - I don't - it's possible. She was tired. Really tired."

"Yeah. Shit."

His heart crashed at Logan's curse; he'd held out some kind of hope for a miracle, talking to Logan, and it was evident now that this was much worse. "Logan, what do I do?"

"I don't - I don't have anything for you right now. But - give me a couple hours. I'm going to get Boyd's ass in here. We'll work on it. Text me her levels once you do a blood panel. All the numbers, Castle. Okay?"

"Okay," he answered, heard his own voice hollow.

"The charcoal is a good idea. That's good. That's - if her heart stops, Rick-"

"I got a portable defib," he rasped. "I stole one from a clinic. I got that much."

"Good, that's good. Okay. You know how to use it, I'm assuming-"

"Yes."

"Good. All right. Look, put her on a heart monitor-"

"I got that too. Waiting on the power to hook it up."

"Good," Logan rushed out. He sounded like he was hurrying - he might be at the office, maybe he'd been out for lunch? Castle couldn't remember just what time it was here, let alone there.

"Can you tell me anything to do for her?" he said finally. "She's just - it's not good, Logan."

"I don't _know_," Logan fumed. "I don't know. She shouldn't have been doubling the damn dose. She should have _told_ me she was weaning the kid, _Boyd_ should have told me, someone should have fucking said something. All the levels are wrong. It's a damn delicate balance, Castle."

"I know." He knew _now_, that was for sure. He couldn't even see her in the dark, nothing but the sickly glow of her skin near his face, her fingers close to his chin. He was leaning in over her, straining to hear her every breath. "I'll text you info as I get it. The CBC. And the - heart rate and pressure and all of it."

"Oxygen exchange rates. Don't forget that. Blood gas. Heavy metal levels."

"Okay. Yes. I know." He did. He knew that stuff; his father had said he could get the CBC kit once they had power. CBC would be done after a couple more hours - supposed to fast for six to twelve beforehand, and they were approaching that now.

"We'll work on this from here, with what you send me. Okay? Castle. We'll work on it. We are going to _help_ her."

"Okay," he echoed, bringing himself back together with every breath. "Okay. I'll text you."

He hung up the phone and at that moment, the lights flickered on.

* * *

She was hooked up to the heart monitor he'd stolen, her pulse-ox number on the display not so good. Not so good. But her heart still beat. It was still going, blood pressure was bad, but-

She was alive. Alive. And he could monitor things; he could see right on the screen what was going on.

Black had gone back out for the CBC kit and machine; he said he knew a place. He apparently wasn't interested in burning his contacts with Castle right there, so Castle let him have his damn secrecy.

Kate was alive. Alive for now. He'd inserted the catheter himself once Black had gone, not wanting to do that with his father in the room, and it looked good - no blood in the bag - and his hope had returned.

He watched the number, up and down, looked for patterns where there were none, willing her to breathe, her heart to beat, her body to recover. Another round of charcoal was scheduled in three more hours, and then they'd see how her blood levels were. The CBC would indicate concern for kidney failure, for toxicity - it would tell him where they were. Just had to hang on until then.

Castle was sitting hunched over a camp stool, her hand trapped between two of his and pressed to his lips. So small, the bones so thin. He breathed, couldn't manage to time his own lungs to hers, but she _was_ breathing. She was.

He looked at the numbers again and reassured himself of it.

When he looked back down to her face, he saw her eyes were open.

Immediately he had pitched forward onto his knees at her side, caressing her cheek, trembling. "Kate?" he whispered. "Hey, honey. Hey, sweetheart. It's okay. We're gonna make you okay."

Her lids looked heavy, eyes open bare slits, lashes fluttering as she seemed to try to wake. He stroked the hair back from her face, the matted, muddy strands that kept tangling in the various lines and leads. Her head tilted and she groaned, almost soundless, vibrations in the air.

"Kate," he whispered. "I love you, I love you. I'm going to get you better. Okay? It was the pills. We think it was the pills, not Jolin. You're going to be okay."

Her eyes on him, so dark and drowning; he could tell that she barely held on.

Castle leaned in and dusted his lips over her forehead. "You're going to be okay. We'll make it okay."

She moaned and his heart flipped, and then a second later, he realized his father was in the room. Black had come back, completely unheard, and now he stood at the foot of the cot and watched them.

Castle blocked her view of him, came close, cupping her face in his hands. "You're okay, we're okay. I swear, Kate, I swear to you. I will _keep_ you safe. Please, honey, please, Kate, just-"

Her breath was rattling in her lungs, the pulse of it making her throat flutter before his very eyes.

"Kate, honey, it's okay. It's okay. I'm here. I'm won't let him hurt you. I won't let him." He kept his face close to hers, filling up her sight, his body practically lying over hers in the narrow cot.

After too long, the panic must have receded, but so did her consciousness. She dropped back out of it without looking at him, no recognition on her face.

* * *

"It's going to take a second," his father said. Black was sitting on the only chair, pulled up to the lone table, the kit spread out over the surface, the machine humming. "For results."

Castle nodded; he knew it wasn't immediate. He didn't know if he wanted Kate to open her eyes again or just stay unconscious; either one was scary. How she'd not recognized him, but she _had_ recognized Black standing at the foot of the cot. The moan in her chest that had sounded so agonized.

But it was terrible sitting beside her and not knowing. Not knowing if she'd ever wake up again, if she'd know him at all, if she wasn't maybe slipping further away.

He kept thinking about diabetic comas. One of the guys in his unit had been a brittle diabetic, but he'd been a tech support guy who wasn't supposed to go into the field with them - only he had, and frequently, needing his expertise. As squad leader, Castle had stayed up nights, going through worst-case scenarios in his head when he should've been getting his R&amp;R before another excursion.

This was like a diabetic coma, best he could figure. System shutdown, or close enough, body in shock from the toxicity of all those elements swamping her blood.

"You want to do this now?" Black said into the silence.

Castle jerked his head up, stared blankly at his father. "Do what?"

"The serum injection."

He scraped a hand down his face and breathed. "Yeah," he muttered. His voice felt raw, like he'd been crying. Maybe he had been. Hard to know. "Yeah, let's do this now."

"Everything's in the freezer," Black said. But he didn't move from the chair.

Castle shifted his gaze from his father to the narrow doorway of the kitchen, barely made out one end of the white, chest-high freezer. "You didn't have any power in here."

"That did. Does. Perpetual. Solar panels on the roof. I know what I'm doing."

"Solar panels." He didn't fucking believe it. "Right."

"Can't have the electricity hooked up, Richard. If you were thinking straight, you'd see this place for what it is."

Fallout shelter, what it was. Last-ditch place to hole up and lay low. He'd had a similar place in Ireland after it went sideways, and he remembered there'd been a dog there too. Damn dog. Some kind of trained beast, in the ring, one of Foley's bastards had been fighting him. Scarred up, nasty brute. Castle had thought he should kill it, but it tagged along, hung out for a day, then had slunk off.

Castle hadn't actually had any electricity in that place. Sleeping on flattened cardboard boxes and the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over his ears in the cold. But never too cold, never even got to him, just his ears and not wanting squatters to see his face if they broke in.

Squatters here wouldn't catch on about the freezer; it was probably locked anyway. They'd mess with it, yeah, but in the end, there wasn't much that could be done to break in. And the place _had_ been locked when his father had led them here.

"Bottom rack. Combination is your birthday."

"Real birthday or the one on the records?" he said, rising slowly to his feet.

"You figure it out," Black answered. Deadpan, not fucking around right now, not willing to give Castle slack.

He knew why too. Because it was clear this was Castle's own damn fault, his own making. He'd reacted instead of acted, shooting Jolin, and he'd done that because Beckett got to him, a strike at his very core when she went down, which Black despised. But worst of all - Castle was no longer in prime condition.

If he'd been on the program, stuck to the damn program, he'd have seen and understood. He'd have watched her closely when she had said she was tired, and fuck, he probably would have been clearer-headed about what she was doing anyway.

Not to mention how he'd barely carried her out of the park. Not to mention he'd panicked and shot Jolin when his machine-like nerves had never deserted him like that before. Not to mention how this all played right into Black's little fantasy that Castle was being ruined by his wife.

Well, he got it now. He understood how important it was, why _both_ of them harped on him about it.

In the freezer, huh?

Castle didn't want to leave her on the cot in case she opened her eyes and had only a clear line of sight straight to Black sitting in that chair, but he needed a damn shot, needed what it gave him, needed the _super_ if he was going to have a chance at all to save her life. If he was super, he could keep Black away from her, he could think this through, he could do the right thing instead of acting like that terrified five year old.

Problem was - if he had an injection, it would drag hard at him, suck him down towards unconsciousness. That scared the shit out of him. At least two hours, probably four, and he'd be almost impossible to rouse, never mind guard his wife from Black.

Castle flipped the dial on the combination lock set through the freezer handles. The metal was cold, but he barely felt it. So much of him was numb, reactionary to keep him from thinking about it.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw his father was watching him. At least he wasn't watching Kate.

Maybe he should be. Someone should be looking at the numbers. Or watching the blood run through the kit. Or-

He keyed in the combination without thinking and it clicked, came apart. He slid the metal through the handle and opened the freezer. Castle saw immediately what he was looking for, and it was another combination to get inside the strong box resting on the bottom. Some damn frozen chicken breast and a bag of peas were its only camouflage.

Shit. He keyed in his birthday again and it vibrated in negative. "What's the code?" he called over his shoulder. He took just a quick look and realized now that Black _was_ eyeing Kate, and his breath caught, cold as ice in his lungs. "Black. What's the second code?"

"Your birthday." Black made a tsking sound of disapproval. "You only have one more chance. Make it count."

God damn it; Black was fucking around with him _now? _Showing off, trying to make Castle prove something? Was that it? Prove he was still good enough for Black's precious program.

_Fuck it. _He had to get that injection.

His actual birthday had been the outside lock - April Fool's Day - but not the inside. And there was no way it was the birthday in official records.

Ah, fuck. The day Black had taken him from boarding school at Christmas break.

He gritted his teeth and went for it, pissed as hell when it worked. So fucking pissed. It felt like a damn set-up, but there was nothing he could do. Logan was on his side, but Logan was the world away and still needed the CBC and an arterial blood gas - which they hadn't drawn yet - and he had no fucking choice here.

He pulled two vials out of their foam padding and closed the lid, then the freezer, and he came back slowly to Black at the kitchen table. But he pocketed one of the vials before his father could see.

"Get a needle from the first aid kit."

Castle deposited the remaining vial on the table and turned again, shuffled slowly to Kate's bedside where he dropped to one knee before the kit. Pawing through the contents, he found a needle still in the sterilized package, and then he looked up at his wife.

Face wan and tinged grey at the curve of her nose, the line beside her mouth. Eyelashes like dark shadows.

Castle stood up and turned back around to his father.

"Before we do this, you have to agree to something."

Black narrowed his eyes.

"You know what it does to me when I take it," Castle said, pitching his voice low and deadly. "You know it takes hold. But I'm going to sit on that cot with Kate in my arms and I'm going to fucking stay awake and you can't touch her."

"Not even if she crashes?"

His nostrils flared, grief crushing his ribs. "If she - crashes - if she needs medical attention, yes. Yes, of course. Don't be an asshole. You know what I mean."

"I wouldn't fucking touch her if you _asked_ me to."

Castle stood over his father in the chair, fists clenched. "Be very clear. I will be aware, I will be conscious. Don't fuck with me."

"Sit down, you posturing fool. Sit down and hold out your arm so I can put you to rights. Once you're back in business, this will go a lot more smoothly."

Castle grimly got on his knees and offered his arm, his head turned to Kate.

Had to look at his wife, just keep his eyes on her.

* * *

F-fuck.

It took supreme effort of will to not fall asleep.

His chest was heavy with it, eyes gritty and ragged so that the light of the hurricane lamp made strange marks against the walls. Shadows. That's what they were. Shadows.

The lamp had come out of a storage locker near the front door; Black didn't want the lights on to advertise their presence. Castle got it. Made sense. But in the back of his mind, he wondered if the lamp's small glow was a subterfuge, if Black really was trying to dim the lights and put on soft, soothing music and _lull_ him to sleep.

Drop his guard, let his chin hit his chest, leave her helpless.

He refused.

It hurt. There was a steady ache behind his eyes, in his very skullbones, and the sternomastoid muscles that ran from his collarbone up the side of his neck below his ear - fuck, they were tight and unbending. That wasn't right. Hurt, just sitting here with his back against the wall.

Maybe those vials had expired. Just his luck.

He had pulled the stool up at the head of the cot so he could keep himself upright, so he wouldn't fall on her if he did slump unconscious, and he kept one hand near her neck, close enough to feel her pulse under the cool skin.

But there. Still beating, which was a fucking miracle and he didn't doubt that. He'd _been _there. That place you went, when you were dying, that place where not even your own will to live could drag you out. He knew she was there now. At that place. Her eyes had been open and unseeing, for that brief, fear-filled moment - she'd been right there, but unable to get back, not even cognizant he was there with her.

He knew that place. Intimately familiar with riding close to death. He'd been wounded in Marrakesh, dying of blood poisoning and shock, dumped at the steps of the Australian embassy. He _knew_ what it was to be blind with darkness and unable to keep his own heart beating.

But his fingers were at her pulse and he could feel it, irregular as it was, and his own blood singing as it stirred with energy, the massive resources it sapped from him just to get his cells up to speed. Like a hard reboot.

Black hadn't any of the stabilizers here, so he'd said. Castle had looked, briefly, in that freezer, but it might be true. Still, Kate's pills were in her jacket, zipped into the interior pocket - which had told him a lot about just how much she'd been taking. So Castle had swallowed two of them when Black hadn't been looking.

And _yes_, he fucking well knew those supplements were what had gotten Kate like this now, but his body would crash hard if he didn't have something to draw on for fuel. Eggs, Threkeld had told him once - had it been Boyd? - eggs and protein, the cholesterol specifically.

He needed it, needed to fucking stay awake. Wait for the CBC to pop up with results. Wait patiently-

Wait, wait. He was struggling to remember. A machine, there'd been a machine in the Congo station when he and Beckett had gone through the labs. She'd said to him, _hematology analyzer_, and he'd thought, _what the fuck is that_, and she'd laughed at him and said he hadn't known enough about his own damn blood.

That machine. What Black had right here in the kit he'd stolen or borrowed from whatever source he had. The machine right there - the little vial had gone into the front, snapped in, and the machine had a readout and Castle had _heard_ it run through the start-up. A five minute process.

"It's done, isn't it?" Castle said suddenly, trying to fucking find his own _brain_ in the mess of his body orienting itself to super. "You've known for a while now. The damn results. Doesn't take an hour. Doesn't - fuck it doesn't take this long for a CBC. Minutes, you bastard."

He shifted on the stool, tried to move, lunge, something, and Black so fucking smug sitting at the kitchen table, but behind it wariness. Damn right, better be wary, _I am fucking coming for you_-

"I have the results, yes."

"Why the _fuck-"_

"What good does it do _you_ to know? You have no idea what the results mean. You've never paid the slightest attention to what goes on with the program. Your _own_ body and you have never once even asked-"

"I'm asking now!" Castle yelled. He felt his body shaking in time to the too-hard beat of his heart, but his damn muscles wouldn't contract when he told them to. Black had done it this way on purpose, made him weak for this moment right here. A fucking tongue lashing, scolding him like he was twelve again and not studying his Cantonese.

"You don't even know what it all _means_. I could rattle off her leukocyte count and her thrombocytes and you don't even know."

"White blood cells," he growled. "Platelets. I know that damn much."

"And what else?" Black crossed his arms; he knew he had the upper hand. "Flow cytometry? Cuvette?"

"Fuck," he rasped, his brain already swirling, everything slipping away from him. "Just tell me. I need to know what it is."

"I'm working on a plan, Richard. You knowing the damn numbers isn't going to change anything. You can't help her. You have steadfastly refused to know anything about the program, you have buried your head in the sand. And this is what happens."

"It's not my fault," he growled. "This isn't - it's not my fault. You're the one-"

"You're the one who _missed every fucking sign_."

He sucked in a breath through lungs that seemed to collapse, ribs pushing out against the terrible ache in his whole body. "You're the one who started this," he got out.

"You're the one who can't damn well finish it. Look at her, Richard. Just fucking look at her. You did that. You brought her into this completely and irresponsibly uninformed, your head in the sand, willfully ignoring my better judgment so that you could do what? Deny your own existence? Your purpose? Your brought her into this and then you fucking knocked her up, and now look. Now she's dying because you couldn't just do your damn job."

He was looking: so pale in the dim light, her skin awash with grey, lashes a dark slash above her too prominent cheekbones. He withdrew his hand from her neck, folded his fingers up into a fist, not touching her, unable to look away but not able to deny anything his father had said.

It was all true.

He should have done his damn job. From the beginning. And no, no, he was never going to be able to leave her. Even doing his damn job, he'd never have been able to stand at a distance and maintain his silent surveillance when she'd been so... she was so amazing and strong and compassionate even from afar.

Never, he'd never have been able to not have her.

But once he had her, God damn him, he should have done his job.

"Tell me the numbers," he rasped. "Tell me exactly. I need to get a message to someone who will help."

"Your little team at Stone Farm doesn't even _begin_ to know what this is-"

Castle snarled, surging to his feet and advancing a step before his father's unconscious flinch made him pause. At least he'd done that, at least there was that - he scared the bastard. Black's eyes glittered fiercely up at him, but it was a glare from a ruined face. A face _Castle_ had ruined, and could again, serum-drunk or not.

"Give me the numbers."

Black pressed a button on the desktop analyzer, and the screen lit up in black and green and yellow.

About damn time.

"Don't fuck around with her," Castle said to him. "Don't you dare. You can take potshots at my head all you want - sure, it's my own damn fault, and I take it, I'll fucking take it. But you _save her_. Do you understand me?"

"What do you think I've been trying to do?" Black snapped, but the glittering hatred was in his eyes and his gaze flipped to Beckett.

Castle leaned in and gripped his father's shoulder, the first time he'd touched him in years without it being a punch. "Listen to me. You let her die and I will take you apart in this very room, I will use these needles to shred your veins to ribbons, to fish around in your nerve endings, and then I will peel away your skin and remove your fingernails slowly, you know how it's done, slowly back and forth, wiggling the nail in the nailbed while you scream - and I will enjoy it. If she dies - if she _dies. _Don't think for a second that I won't fucking absolutely _revel_ in gutting you out."


	4. Chapter 4

**Close Encounters 22**

* * *

Logan was eager on the phone. "We had a team meeting. Threkeld took a look at Echo's last blood test-"

His son? "Why?" Castle scraped out. "Kate is-"

"Listen. It's all interconnected. What we did to Kate, we did to Echo, and what Echo did to her, in return, is vital here."

"Okay," he said, his voice dragging through the sounds. His body was so heavy after the serum injection. He needed to rest, but he couldn't. Couldn't. "Go slow, Logan. Black gave me a shot of the serum that he had on hand-"

"What the _fuck_? That is very bad idea."

"Had to. Was - slowing down. Slowed down. Just say it plain."

Logan let out a noise. "I don't curse, you know. I never curse. This makes me so damn wretched, Castle-"

"I know. It's not ideal. But he had it and I needed a boost."

"This isn't a protein drink. Look at what the _supplements alone_ are doing to her-"

"Tell me about the blood tests. What your colleague said." No way was he mentioning Threkeld over the line, though Black already knew the man, had to, since Threkeld had been taken by the Collective while Kate had been pregnant.

"Okay, okay." Logan let out a breath. "When Echo was nutrient-deficient-"

Starving.

"-Beckett had been taking the prenatal vitamins because she was nursing. We all know that. But they weren't enough for them _both._ Not at that time. Six weeks - nearly seven weeks - she wasn't taking the supplements for either of them. So Echo was affected as well as Kate."

"Right," he said into Logan's pause. His son's skinny little arms, the bones of his knees too knobby in those legs. He viscerally remembered that.

"We started looking at the blood tests from Echo over the last six months, just wanting to see - where did we miss it? When did we miss it? So that we _know_ what's been going on in Kate's body as well. Because _her_ blood tests have been normal."

"I know."

"Well, the last one wasn't exactly normal, when I was on vacation, and I'm furious, but we're not dealing with that right now. Threkeld had an idea."

"And?" Not Logan's fault that when Boyd took Kate's blood two weeks ago, he hadn't been paying strict attention. They had _all_ assumed Kate was fine, since she'd _been_ fine, and no one had asked.

"Threkeld's noticing that Echo had heavy - very heavy - activity in what he calls mitocondrial by-product."

"What the hell is that?"

"Energy, mostly. Reserves of energy produced by mitochondria inside a cell. And Castle, the thing is, no one is entirely sure what mitochondria can do. They know a few things, but not all, and it's been clear to us that _your_ mitochondria are doing things that ours are not."

"And now his?"

"And now Echo... something else. Not what yours does. Nothing at all related to red blood cells that we can tell. Byproducts, you know. But it started when he was nutrient-deficient."

"Like... like a trigger?"

"A catalyst. Survival mode in his body's systems - that's what we're guessing right now. And it didn't turn off. It might have gone dormant here and there, we're not clear what it all means yet, but his body was fighting to protect his super-ness. If that makes sense."

"Without stabilizers," Castle said, realizing at just that moment what Logan was saying. James's body had worked without the stabilizers to preserve whatever was different about his mitochondria, and yes, it had sucked every last nutrient out of Kate, but it had worked. And then Kate had started the supplements again to keep them both in balance, but...

"So why now? Just a surfeit of nutrients? Toxicity?"

"Not... not sure. It's more than just that. Because some of her levels are perfectly fine, and that can't be right. Potassium, for example. It's in normal ranges. That should be impossible."

"We're giving her charcoal so wouldn't that be it?"

"No," Logan interrupted. "Not at this kind of - just no. It's got something to do with the last six months. With what Echo has managed to create on his own, self-contained. It's possible, Castle, it's possible that Echo hasn't been drawing down from her as much as we thought. It's possible that when he was nutrient-deficient, he might have come out of it on his own, based on what his body is doing now. It's possible her taking those pills was only to keep _her _system balanced. Not his. Once she was in balance, then Echo could handle his own alone."

"Self-contained system," he said, his fingers burning on the phone. Kate was unconscious before him as he hunched against the wall.

James was a closed loop, regimen-wise. _That's_ what they were saying. He might not even _need_ supplements. Maybe here and there. Maybe the bananas and their special properties were superfluous, and that was all fine and good, very good actually, for James, but _Kate_.

"What does this mean for her?" he said. "What do we do for Kate?"

"Threkeld... Threkeld is saying Kate is _part_ of Echo's system. And we know that - the nutrients and immunologies that go through breastmilk, definitely. But this is... there might be an exchange going on."

"_Exchange_?"

"When he nurses. In his saliva maybe? Hormonal perhaps, pheromones - Threkeld is looking into the hormone angle but there is a lot of evidence in scientific studies that say babies are receptive to their primary care-takers in ways we just don't understand. The hormones could be doing it, the pheromones-"

"Doing _what_?"

"Regulating Kate's systems, breaking down the excess, performing maintenance."

James had... wait. Fuck. Wait. James's _advanced_ superness had somehow regulated his _mother's system_?

Fucking hell. "So what are you telling me? What are you saying here? That if Kate can fucking _nurse him_, it evens things out? Because I think that's pretty much off the table right now."

"No. Not now. It's gone too far, even if her milk was in. It's a delicate balance, and James's nursing was simply maintaining it. We weren't - _I_ looked at red blood cells and electrolytes, mainly - I wasn't focused on white cell count, on a few other things that Threkeld is calling mitochondrial byproducts, and that's my fault. I didn't think those things were part of-"

"No. Don't. Just... figure out what you can. She's too far past the easy fix, I got it." Easy fix being _nursing their son_. She'd been posed on some precarious ledge for the last six months and they just hadn't known how precarious. James - thank God for him - James had been the thing keeping her back from the edge.

And keeping on the supplements. Double-edge sword, taking the supplements.

"We're still looking," Logan said finally. "Castle, I swear, we're not going to even sleep. We're doing mitochondrial stains on the samples we do have, and Threkeld is pretty intense - he's on top of this. Boyd is looking at more normal nutritional solutions - why her potassium levels are normal but not other things, and we're going to figure something out."

But, damn, Logan sounded desperate. At the end of his rope. Castle didn't hold out much hope for it, and his father's smug silence was eating away at the last of Castle's self-discipline.

"I'll text you the second we have something. But in the meantime..."

"The charcoal," Castle supplied. "Yeah. I got it."

Logan ended the call first and he heard the disconnect over the line, the secure line where Logan still called James by his codename, Echo, and Castle still wouldn't say Threkeld or Boyd's name outright.

And his father right there, all-knowing, smirking in that ruined face.

* * *

Alarm.

Alarm was screaming, shrill in his ears. Castle jerked on the stool and clutched at the cot to keep from falling, waking to the sound of the heart monitor going off. He'd fallen asleep. Kate. Kate was unresponsive, heart failing, and his father-

His father was crouched over her, fingers pressed into her chest.

Castle sucked in air, rage flashing through him, and then he fell to her side and realized-

_The alarm._

She wasn't breathing, heart had stopped. "Black," he scraped out.

His father was doing compressions. "Get over here."

Castle took over immediately, palms slick as laid one hand over the other, began compressions. His father jerked to his feet and moved away.

"Where - where are you going?" Castle cried out.

"Meds," Black said sharply. Castle took his eyes off Kate to glance over his shoulder, saw his father grabbing two vials from the collection on the table. A needle in its sterile package.

He let out a breath, relief making his heart flutter, and he kept counting compressions, concentrating again on Kate.

"IV atropine," Black said tersely. "Move."

Castle shifted down, allowing Black at the IV port to inject the atropine, but he didn't stop compressions. They didn't have time to do mouth breathing, no time to check, not when they _had_ to get her heart started.

"Okay, I got it." Black was pushing the needle back into the package, carefully disposing of it in a metal canister he'd grabbed from somewhere. Ages ago now, hours since they'd been here.

Castle continued compressions, and suddenly Kate sucked in a rasping breath, and it held, it held and time stopped, and then finally she breathed out on a whine.

"Stop, stop," Black said, trying to knock his hands away. "Look at the monitor, stop-"

Castle saw the numbers clipping upwards, unsteady, irregular, but moving up again. He removed his hands from her chest, tension pinching his throat, his eyes on the monitor.

"There we go," Black murmured. "Nice and easy."

Shivers crawled down Castle's spine and he shot his father a look, suddenly aware that he'd been unconscious, and Kate helpless, and who knew what Black had been doing.

No call from Logan. Nothing from Boyd or Threkeld. Charcoal had been downed, third round of it so far, and the dim light in the room threw shadows across Kate's-

Her eyes were open.

Castle crowded in close, hovering over her in the cot, cupped the sides of her face. "Kate?"

Eyes open but unfixed, rolling back now. A kind of noise from her throat, groan to whimper, and he felt the rigid clench of muscles in her arms. Her lids fluttered, lashes like birds' wings, and he softly kissed her forehead.

"It's okay. It's okay, honey. I'm here."

Lashes parted, eyes sliding to his face, but the recognition just wasn't there. He couldn't even be sure that she really saw him, saw anything. But he hoped she could hear his voice.

"I got you, Kate. I got you. You hear me? I can take care of this, I will take care of this. Just rest, just keep breathing for me."

Her eyelids fell, slowly, like a dance, two steps forward, one back, until she was gone again.

* * *

He had successfully come through the other side of the serum shot. The effects were waning, the intense need for sleep had crawled off into a hole to die, and now it was the jitter of his heart in his chest as it sped up, the thump and pulse of blood reaching his vital organs.

Like a high. He hadn't been given pure serum in years, and now it was having its way with him.

The room was dark, lit only by the soft hurricane lamp near the door. The last round of charcoal had gone in - they were out of sodium bicarb - and she'd thrown up once, still unconscious - but he didn't know if any of it was working.

Toxicity. They might be cleaning out her system, maybe, but there were side effects to toxicity that just couldn't be accounted for. Not when it was the program, not when those pills were designed to enhance the same systems they were now bringing down.

Metabolic acidosis could have damaged her brain and liver, could have sloughed off the lining of the gastrointestinal tract. His father had said her vision might be-

He couldn't think about it right now. Black had left him alone with her, and he didn't know what that meant, where he'd even gone, didn't know if it was a good thing because Black had thought of something else to do for her, or if it was the end.

Fuck, he was afraid.

He had no idea. Black could be killing her, but at the same time, Kate had been - was - she was dying. Still. It wasn't good, even with the charcoal and the saline and everything. Her heart had stopped twice now, and injections of atropine just couldn't last.

His phone rang.

Castle dived for it, scooping it up with a catch in his throat, answering before he even registered the ID.

And then it _did_ register. And he closed his eyes, heard her father's voice over the phone.

"Rick?"

Oh, God. "Jim," he croaked, trying to get control of himself.

"I - uh - I'm sorry to be calling, but I thought maybe I should."

"Jim," he started again, but he couldn't quite get past the man's name.

"I don't know if I was right to do it, but Logan came over and took James's blood. Was that okay? It was just on his heel, but he cried pretty hard, and Logan took like two vials of it, and now I'm wondering if I need to be giving him something extra-?"

Castle swallowed and focused. Focused on getting this right, on not letting Jim hear it, none of it, because they had two more days before he had to say anything, and his damn futile hope was that he'd never have to tell Jim Beckett - _I don't know if she'll survive_.

"Logan is fine - drawing blood is just fine. They're doing tests to be sure he's good. That's all."

"I don't need to give him anything extra, do I? Katie said the bananas are fortified. I didn't know Logan would be coming."

"No," Castle said. He took in a deeper breath. "No, you shouldn't have to. Interesting - interesting new theory, Logan was sharing it with me. Might be that James is - ah - self-contained system. If you understand it at all, which I'm not sure I did."

Jim chuckled softly. "Right, I know you hate talking about all this stuff. I'll just gossip with Kate when you guys get back, dissect that to the last detail. Won't rub your nose in it."

"Right," he breathed, barely able to get it out.

"Well, son. Sorry to have called while you were - you know. Just wanted to be sure I stayed on top of it. Don't want a repeat of that failure to thrive stuff."

"Of course," he said. He was going to break down, he was going to collapse if Jim kept talking.

"Talk to you soon, son."

"Yeah," he gruffed. "We will."

And the call ended and he was alone again, alone with Kate breathing shallowly on the cot, her heart rate unsteady, and his guilt eating a hole in him.

* * *

A text from Logan, _we can't reverse it. I'm sorry. nothing we try in the lab will work. we've injected the rats, they're all dying._

Castle stared at the phone, stared until the words on the screen hazed and trembled.

_they're all dying _

Dying. They were all dying, every single experimental rat. Nothing to do, nothing more to do.

Castle dropped the phone and it landed on the cot, bouncing to lay against the side of her thigh. This was his wife, not some experiment.

He bowed over her, desperate, absolutely desperate, but he had nothing. No idea what came next, where to turn. If Boyd and Threkeld's every attempt came to naught, then what else was there?

Hope his father had a miracle. _Trust_ his father to save her and also save himself. Believe that John Black was going to keep his promise, that John Black didn't want to die more than he wanted Kate gone.

But Castle was actually thinking clearly now, and damn it all, Black had already said, once before, _might as well_. Might as well, he'd said in the living room of that Roman apartment with his hand on the trigger of a bomb. Might as well because he didn't think there was a reason to live when Kate still did, and had Castle so firmly in her clutches.

Might as well, he'd said.

Was it all subterfuge? Or worse, was it a play for Castle's sympathy or forgiveness? Pretend to take care of his wife, pretend to try, and thus ensure his own life, thus ensure his preeminence in his son's life - despite her death. Or so he thought.

Even if Kate was dead, there was no way in _hell_ that Castle would fall into line with his father. No fucking way. How could Black not know that now?

Of course, Black was certain that if Kate was out of his life, it would just go back to how it had been. Every problem fixed if Kate was gone. Hadn't he already said that? So why _wouldn't_ he assume that if he played nice and went through the motions, then Castle would show him his due respect?

Holy fucking shit. His father could be leading him around by the nose, and there was absolutely nothing Castle could do about it. He didn't _have_ anything better, didn't _know_ a single thing about the regimen's deeper science. He'd been the experiment and he'd done his job and he hadn't asked questions. And then when it had all come out, when Kate had probed this thing and finally begun learning the scope of the program, Castle hadn't been willing to come along.

Because it was _wrong_. It was wrong to play fast and loose with ethics and morals and people's lives, and Kate had been the one to really teach him that. It was wrong and it was worse than wrong to probe into Black's knowledge of the program when his father had been the one to _put her on her knees in an alley._

That was Castle's whole stumbling block. He hadn't wanted to know because knowing meant, somehow, agreeing with his father's sins, or at least aligning himself with the man, and he couldn't. He absolutely could not do that. Black had tried to kill his wife, murder his wife, _kept trying_, and Castle couldn't and wouldn't put himself onto that side of the equation.

So he'd ignored the regimen.

And now look. Kate was dying, with or without Black's help, _dying_, and his ignorance was killing her faster.

A sound in the hallway had Castle sitting up straight, moving to block Kate from view, and then the lock on the door rattled as Black opened it and came in.

He'd been locked in, Castle realized belatedly. He'd been locked into this room and there was no deadbolt to flip on this side of things, no. It required the key on both sides and now his father had shut the door and was pushing the key into the lock and locking them in.

Fuck. He needed to be paying attention. He needed that damn key.

Black had returned. He moved slowly as he turned to face Castle, and his eyes were empty. So were his hands. Black had returned with nothing. Nothing in his hands, no amazing miracle cure, nothing.

_Nothing._

What the hell had he been out there doing?

A jolt of fury pushed Castle up from the stool, rushing Black at the door and slamming him against the wall. "What the hell have you been doing?"

"None of your damn business."

"I'm making it my business."

"Checking sources. Release me, Richard, right now."

"Sources. For what." He rattled Black against the wall, just enough to make his point.

"For _answers_. You fool. Why don't you pay attention to your wife instead of tossing me around?"

"You were out there just _asking_ people shit? That's all? And now what - you got nothing. You have nothing else to save her life."

"We're giving her last measures, here, Richard. Not my fault if-"

"Last measures, and it's not working, and so why the hell should I let you live a moment longer?"

"I didn't say I had _nothing_-"

"Then start talking. Start talking right now. Because from where I sit, pumping charcoal down her stomach is something I could've had the damn hospital do _and _had real care around her."

"I'm doing everything I can-"

"It's not _enough_," Castle roared. "It's not damn enough. She's not getting better. She's just - barely - barely hanging on and every ten minutes or so her heart stutters like it's going to stop and _you need to do something_."

Black had shut his mouth, jaw tight and teeth grinding, and his eyes flared in the light, staring back at Castle. But there was more, of fucking course there was more than this; Black wouldn't have gone out there unless he had some idea what to do.

And Castle felt both fiercely, super strong, and also terribly, awfully broken, and he was going to kill this man if all he had was nothing. "Out with it," Castle cracked. "What's our next step? How are you going to save her?"

"Next step," Black hissed. "There is _nothing_ else to do. This is all there is, Richard, and I am doing everything I can. You think I'm not perfectly aware of how much pain you can cause me? Of how gruesome a death I can die at your hands? I don't want her dead. If she's dead, the buffer between you and me is gone."

"Damn right it is-"

"So I don't want her to die. Self-preservation alone says I don't want her to die. I am doing everything, everything I can. Sometimes we just don't get what we want, Richard."

The fucking motto of his whole fucking life with Black. But not this time. "If you can't save her, then I know someone who can."

"Stone Farm will never be able to save her."

"Not the Farm," he snarled. And deftly, smoothly, he picked Black's pocket, held the key up to his father's face. "Diane Jolin. _She_ knows. She knows better than you."

And he pushed away from the man who had no help for him.

* * *

Black's fingers snapped out, almost fast enough to catch him. Castle fisted the key, glaring.

"You can't be serious," Black gasped.

Castle stepped back, but he didn't take his bracing forearm off Black. "She was trying to warn Kate at the park."

"But you _shot_ her." Black sneered. "She's not going to _help_ you."

"She's in the hospital. I checked on my phone; news reports say she was taken to American Hospital in Paris."

"What?" Black's nostrils flared, asymmetrically because of the damage, and he jerked forward to try to break Castle's hold. Impossible. He was fucking super right now. Black had nothing on him.

Castle felt the key piercing his palm. "She's stable - it was her knees. I aimed for kneecaps, like Kate asked. I can ask-"

"The Collective is crawling all over that place, and you know it."

"I can get in," Castle said simply. There was no room for argument, none. He needed more than the nothing he'd gotten from his father. "I can get in and get out again. I'll bring her with me if I have to."

"She's not going to _help_ you. You shot her!"

"She doesn't know that, does she? How can she know who shot her? I'll tell her it was the damn Collective. She was trying to help Beckett, confess something to her anyway. Hell, I'll tell her it was _you._"

"You're insane," his father growled, really struggling against him now, lashing out.

But Castle was damn super and he slammed Black against the wall again, the key in his fist as he did so. "So what if I am? I can't lose her. I will do whatever it takes."

"She did this to save your life and you're going to-"

"Don't talk to me about my wife. You have no idea. I'm going to get her the help she needs, with or without you."

Black made a desperate attempt to break free, but Castle had him, oh, he had him, and he slammed him a little harder into the wall, saw the man's head bounce against the plaster.

"You're making the biggest mistake of your life if you go in there," Black hissed, wincing and closing his eyes. "You won't survive it. And then who does she have?"

"Who says I won't survive it? I'm fucking super. Like you made me."

"The Collective is all over her. She's their number one priority - she has all the research. She does _all_ the research, Richard. They will never let you walk right up to her."

"I can. And I will. To save Beckett? I will." Castle released the man with a final rattle, dropped him hard enough to gain a moment as he moved for the door.

But there he hesitated. He'd have to lock Black inside with Beckett; he couldn't leave Beckett alone in case her heart stopped again, but he absolutely didn't want Black with his wife, not desperate like this.

Leave his wife completely alone?

And in that moment of hesitation, Black was on him, lunging for a chokehold. It was pathetically easy to break, twist his arm, have his father facefirst against the door.

"What do you think you're doing?" he hissed into Black's ear.

The man shouted as Castle twisted up his arm; he flinched and jerked. "Saving - saving your life. And hers-"

"Like hell-"

"And _his_. Your son's _life_. Richard, your son. Think what this does to him-"

"I'm doing this for _him_," Castle bellowed, the rage funneling through him so that he slammed Black into the door again, felt the satisfying thud of bone. "He needs his mother, you fucking bastard; a boy needs his mother and I will _not_ lose her. I won't lose her. You don't understand-"

"If you _go to Jolin_. If you _go_ to her, Richard, you lose everything. You'll have to explain - she'll have to _know_ \- what's happened, _why_ it's happened - she'll know about James."

"I don't fucking care," Castle snarled, dropping the man. "You think I care about the future when she's dying right in front of me?"

He wasn't leaving Black alone with her. He couldn't. Even if - he couldn't do it. Black was going to kill her. He would kill her just to get Castle.

So he shoved the key into the lock and twisted it, yanked open the door even as Black tried to place his body between Castle and the door.

"I'm begging you. Don't do this. Everything is ruined if you tell her about James. She'll know what can be done. She'll take the boy. She won't hesitate. She's _not_ on our side-"

"You are not on my side," Castle growled. "Don't align us. You have never been on my side. Kate-"

"Don't. Don't do it. She'll know about James. _They_ will know about James. Kate wouldn't forgive you for that."

"I don't care," he said bleakly. It was true, God, it was true. Kate alive and furiously unforgiving was better than dead. "She can't die."

Black stared at him, that ruined face, and _something_ seemed to click. As if he hadn't quite understood before and now he did.

How could he _not_ get it? Kate Beckett was everything.

Castle gripped his father by his jacket and shoved him towards the door, ready to go. Kate needed help.

"Wait," Black gasped.

Castle pushed him out into the hall, his father stumbling.

"Wait. Stop. There's one more thing."

He paused, hand on the knob to pull it shut after them, cast his eyes swiftly to Black to assess that statement. "What?"

"One more thing I can do. It's - extreme. It's not guaranteed. I can't - I don't know, Richard, I don't know."

"What?" he repeated, something dark twisting to life in his chest.

"It's _risky_."

"Tell me," he hissed. Castle reached out like lightning and snagged his father, fingers around his throat. "Tell me."

Black's eyes glittered with something broken, something like real fear, and Castle finally let him breathe. He pushed them both back into the cramped, bare apartment and slammed the door shut.

"Talk."

"We tried it on the Army volunteers," Black started, his voice roughened by mistreatment. "We did it on Coonan, to be specific."

"Coonan." The man who had murdered her mother. The man who had been in Castle's attached unit, the volunteers who had been put on the serum. Coonan who had turned crazy and sociopathic and had hired out as a killer. "The ones who went AWOL and slaughtered a whole village."

"This was after that."

"You tried to rehabilitate them?" Castle blinked.

"Coonan was the only one to survive treatment."

Oh, God. "What is it?" he rasped, heart pounding now.

"Advanced chelation. A process of removing metals from the blood. Something in the - mitochondria - the energy-"

"I know what they are. Why?"

"The mitochondria - and this is a very closely guarded secret, Richard-"

He snapped a hand out, slammed Black against the wall. "I don't fucking care about secrets. Tell me."

"The mitochondria produce a metal. A metal I don't - can't - there's nothing like it. It's an element unknown. It binds to cells, does things, and we can see where it's been but we've never seen _it_."

"A metal. An unknown metal."

"That's our thought. My thought, Diane's... she's close to it. I don't know. But we put Coonan through chelation. An advanced chelation with a drug agent we made ourselves in the Army lab combined with a dialysis element. We took the blood out and we put it through a machine and it draws out the metallic elements once the chelation goes through. A little more than that. It's a possibility - only a possibility - and it might not work."

"It might not work. And what happens? She dies?"

"Maybe. Or... she's alive but..."

"But like Coonan? Is that it?"

"I don't know that Coonan's original personality wasn't part of that, but. But it's likely the metallic aspect, the binding, I don't know. It might reach her brain, those by-products."

By-products; God help them. Coonan had been the only one to survive. _Coonan_. Who had gone on to murder her mother.

But what else could he do?


	5. Chapter 5

**Close Encounters 22**

* * *

"You're not doing it," Black said tersely. "Stop arguing. You don't even _want_ me alone with her, so it's not like you have another option."

Castle fumed, paced the small section of concrete floor just before the cot, putting himself between Black and Beckett - however unconsciously he'd done it, he saw now what he was doing, and no. No, he couldn't fathom leaving her to him.

"Fine," he said finally. Black wanted to hare off to some secret cache of laboratory equipment, then fine. It sounded fucking made up, a pretty lie, but he had no options here. "Fine, you go, then. But I promise you, if you're not back with that machine in an hour - one hour - I'm taking her to American and damn the consequences."

"You do that and your son is dead."

"You don't know that," Castle fought back, heart crunched hard and small under the weight of it. "I don't even know that the Collective are the bad guys. I mean, really, what evidence do I have at all?"

"Don't bullshit me-"

"It's not bullshit, Black. I have _no idea_ whose side you're on, but it sure as hell isn't mine. You've done nothing but attempt to _murder_ the one person I love, for years. The one person who has actually gone to bat for you, convinced me time and again that there's more to you. But instead of us uncovering some sympathetic story, we only hear more and more shit."

"I've told you about the program. About your place in it. These aren't lies-"

"It's not the lies. It's the _fucking morals_. The damn ethics you trample every time. You kill people at whim, because they're obstacles, and yet the Collective - the Collective? The only person from the Collective I've seen face to face is a woman I shot who was, incidentally, it turns out, trying to _help_ my wife. So no. I don't know what side you're on except your own."

"I'm on your side. You are the-"

"Good or evil, Black? Which is it? That's the problem here.

"There is no _good_ or _evil_. Don't be so fucking simplistic."

"But there is. There is good and there is evil, and you've got to pick one. So you run off, go find your fucking chelation machine, and prove it, prove yourself. And if not, fucking hell, man, I've got - from my side of things - an equal or even better shot with Diane Jolin. At least at American Kate would have care, adequate care. Fuck it all, what do I care about the Collective if they can help her?"

Black's face was ashen in the hurricane lamp's blue glow. "You wouldn't dare."

"Try me."

They squared off, Black's eyes molten with all the fury of a fucking dream deferred, and Castle didn't give a damn. He did _not_ care about his father's program, or the regimen, or the serum. It had and was ruining his life, and if Black didn't come back with this last-ditch effort machine, then Castle was taking her to the hospital, he was taking her in.

"One hour," Castle said darkly, and then he unlocked the door and opened it. He was keeping the key.

Black was breathing hard as he passed, but Castle had no sympathy. He was tired of doing this on his father's terms, of always being manipulated into the wrong side of things.

Because he didn't know. He didn't know if Black was truly on the side of angels or the side of demons.

Maybe the Collective were the good guys, and they'd been wrong all along.

* * *

Logan sounded broken when he answered. "I don't know, Castle."

He closed his eyes. "Tell me something. Tell me anything, Logan. Tell me not to do it-"

"I can't say that either," the man said. "I don't know. We don't know. What he said could be true. The mitochondria. The unknown metal. And now that we have something to look for, a place to start, maybe Threkeld can get ahead of this, but..."

"Not in time," Castle husked. Not in time to save his wife, who was bleached of all color and lying on a cot in the relative darkness.

"Not in time," Logan repeated dully.

Castle stood up to pace the narrow room. His father had left twenty minutes ago and Castle had immediately been on the phone to Logan and the team, asking for a miracle they just didn't have.

"Castle, honestly, this whole thing is a lot more mysterious than we expected. Beckett's _not_ on the serum. She's just not. We wouldn't have allowed it. It _should_ be just classic toxicity."

"But it's not."

"But it's _not_," Logan growled. He sounded damn frustrated that his science wouldn't match with the evidence before them. "It's not just toxicity. It's something else. And Castle, look, I don't know what to tell you because if those pills we gave her _had_ some element of serum to them that we overlooked, then that means-"

"That Black lied."

"Or that he... massaged the truth so that you wouldn't prevent her from taking the supplements. To keep James alive, he might have withheld that fact, thinking you'd have cut your losses and just..."

Aborted his son? No. But sink or swim? Yeah. "I'd have let the kid drown," Castle said roughy. "What you all think. What he thought."

"Kate said..."

Was that what _Kate_ had thought? That he'd let his son suffer to keep her from using the pills?

God, he didn't know the answer to that. He _didn't_ know the answer to that, not when she was dying in front of him, dying by degrees, the color leaching out of her.

"I don't know what I'd have done," he admitted. "I don't know. But there were other considerations, at least, there were choices to make back then that we don't have now. She doesn't have."

"I'm sorry," Logan husked. "I wish I had something more for you."

"Just tell me what you know about advanced chelation."

"Boyd has said, yes, simple chelation might help, it really might. More than the charcoal, which at this point is superfluous."

"Advanced chelation, he said."

"I get the feeling he's adding something to the mix as the blood gets cycled out of her body. And then paired with this dialysis..."

Castle froze. "Holy shit."

"Whatever that additional agent is... that's the risky part. That's the unknown. You start mixing chelation and dialysis and you're really draining her body of minerals."

Castle sank down hard on the stool at the head of the cot, stared at his wife. His wife. God, she couldn't die.

He couldn't lose her. This couldn't be the end of them. Not here, not when their son was halfway around the world, not when they'd fought so long and so hard to have the life they'd wanted, not when he _loved _her.

This wasn't the end. It wasn't. He refused to let it be the end.

"So it's risky," Castle said. "It's risky. All of this is risky, and yet we kept going forward. We did it anyway. So we're doing this too because there is no other choice."

He heard Logan sigh on the other end of the phone, but Logan didn't have anything better for him. They were on their own in this. It had begun like that - the two of them - and here it might end like that.

Castle cleared his throat. "Knowing that - that the advanced chelation is dialysis too - then I need you to start thinking about what her resources might be. What she might need after a purge like that."

"Oh, God," Logan groaned. "There's no way we can know, Castle. This is completely untried."

"Then make it up. Get Boyd and Threkeld on it. Give me options here."

"You're asking for something impossible."

"I know I am. But Beckett's life is in the balance - literally - the balance of nutrients - and I need you to get on top of this. The consequences. What can I expect, what do I need to do for her, what do I look for."

"Okay," Logan said on a long exhale. "Okay. We're on this. Not sure how long this advanced chelation stuff will take, but give us what you know, when you know it, and we'll be looking at it, coming up with scenarios for you. Usually a therapy session is a few hours a every other day or so - for a couple weeks - so we've got time to work on this."

Castle blinked, realized with a rush that tightened his chest, his guts - tantalizing hope. "Thanks, Logan. Thank you."

"Whatever happens, we've got your back."

* * *

The alarm still screamed. He flinched.

"Stop," his father said tersely. "Don't touch it."

The monitor was still going off, her heart line flat, just flat, and Castle couldn't stand it. "Go _faster_."

"I can't. I can't go faster or it will kill her-"

"It's killing her right now." He lunged for his father, but that was a bad idea, such a bad idea, and he knew it, he knew it, but he couldn't just _stand here_ while her heart wouldn't beat.

"Stop, stop," his father yelled at him. "Stop it, Richard. I can't have my hands shake while I'm doing this. Let me get it in."

He stopped, he stopped, her _heart_ had stopped, and still the machine whined, the alarm sounding as if they couldn't hear it, as if Castle couldn't possibly understand how vital this was - her heart had stopped.

But Black was threading a long and terrible needle up into her artery - the same artery they had used to do the blood gas - and now was not the time for Castle to lay hands on his damn father. He made fists of his hands and pressed them into his sides, trembling in time to the scream of the alarm.

The arterial line went in slowly, so slowly it was torture, it was torture to know no blood was being pumped, her heart not beating and this was still going on.

And then his father sat back. "Compressions. Now."

Castle lunged forward and began chest compressions, leaned in close as he did, putting his ear to her mouth to check. Breath sounds, there were breath sounds, thank God, thank God for that. He pressed his hands into her sternum, willing her heart to start for him. "Come on, honey. Come on. Come back to me, Kate."

He felt Black at her elbow, doing something with the machine, and then the heart monitor caught, a blip that was now long-familiar, the sound of her heart figuring out how to beat once more. When it did it again, and again, he eased his hands away, still ready to resume compressions if need be, and watched the monitor relentlessly.

"Okay," his father said. "Okay, I've got it. It's starting."

The converted-dialysis machine thunked and whirred to life, like old film editing, reel to reel, but this was her blood being spliced and put back together.

Castle glanced over to it, the look of fifties science fiction about it, and he watched with dread as the blood began to leak out of her along that thin tube.

Black had already hooked up the other arm to the intake tube, but it had been putting in that last a-line which had done it, battered too hard at her body. Now that her heart was beating again, Castle wasn't sure it was such a good idea to start immediately.

"You did this to Coonan - and the others?"

"Yes. And don't ask me why Coonan survived it, Richard. I don't know. We never knew. Saber never could figure it out."

Saber. Bastard. And then Coonan had been set loose in the world, to be used as a gun for hire, highest bidder, and finally to murder Kate's mother in an alley in Washington Heights.

Castle had the feeling, suddenly, that he and Kate destinies had been entwined from the beginning. If it hadn't been that case with the Chinese spy, it would have been her mother's murderer, eventually, and they'd have been here one way or another.

She was fierce and she was his, and he was going to fight for her.

The wheels turned in the machine and her blood - bright and arterial with oxygen - hit the first of the chugging mechanisms. Castle stared at it, watching the blood go through, watching the scary first moments when the blood was leaving her and none was going in and the machine had to be given that time to do its thing, before blood flowed down to the intake tube and finally into her body again.

When the blood began to slide down the tube and make its insidious way into her arm, Castle finally breathed.

It was going, it was going.

This was their only hope.

* * *

Castle crowded closer to the bed, wrapping his fingers around her upper thigh because he couldn't get to her hands. A line into one elbow took blood out, and a line into the other elbow put it back in, and the threading filament that had gone in looked precarious, too precarious for Castle to even lift her hand to his lips in case he jostled it.

So he squeezed her thigh, bare now but for the ratty, thin blanket that had been laid over her, and Castle kept his eyes on the machines guarding and stimulating her life.

Every heartbeat on the monitor seemed to take an eternity to register, and he felt himself holding his breath until the slow beep came again.

She had died. She had been dying, might even now be dying still. But now. Now his father had - what?

He had no idea what his father had done. He could only hope, could only _will_ it to save her life. He just needed her to live, just keep breathing, heart keep beating until he get her someplace safe, until she was stable enough for a flight home and a hospital surrounded by people he knew and trusted.

Pipe dream, and he knew it. Rainbow wishes. She wouldn't be going to a hospital. This was their only shot. She'd been unresponsive for nearly twenty-four hours now, and if the chelation treatment didn't do it, then nothing would.

"Kate." He found himself bowing over her in the low cot, his forehead to her hipbone. "Kate, please-"

_please don't leave me._

He sucked in a ragged breath and closed his eyes, felt the too-warm burn of her skin against his forehead, the clammy touch of her fingers just under his throat where he'd bent over the cot.

Five hours of chelation, not the norm, not how Logan had advised. The chelating agent Black had injected into the IV had been normal enough, DMSA, an acid that, in a normal procedure, Logan had expected to see. But his father had included a couple of others that he'd scrounged from some damn lab cache and Castle _didn't_ know what they were, only that Logan had suspiciously called this _alternative medicine_.

Whatever it meant, it had to do the job. Had to scrub the mitochondrial byproducts out of her system before the blood-brain barrier was breached. If it got into her brain, then it would be Coonan all over again.

That's what they were facing. Insanity. A mental break. If they didn't do this now, it would eat away her brain.

Castle's hands were shaking; he couldn't even lift his head to look. It felt so precarious, the whole thing, his whole life in the next heartbeat.

He tried to gather his wits, tried to remember what Black and Logan had both said about needing to replace vitamins once the first round was through. He tried to keep his mind on what came next, but it was useless. He could barely take a deep breath without aching, deep and forever, in a place he hadn't known existed.

She might die, God, she might really die. She might - she might be so broken, she'd never be Kate again.

_God, please._

He could fee the smooth, dry expanse of her skin, the soft cotton of the blanket under his cheek. Her fingers against his skin. Her fingers curled naturally at the hollow of his throat, so cool.

And then they twitched.

Castle jerked his head up and saw in the dim glow that her lips had parted.

"Kate." He snagged her hand, careful not to jostle the lines. "Kate, honey, please."

Those fingers curled again, like reflex rather than a real response, but it was close. It was better than nothing.

"Kate?"

A sigh released from her lips - he was close enough to her that he could feel it - and then her lashes began to shiver and part, her eyelids too heavy to stay open.

He crouched in low over her, pressed his mouth to those fingers, never taking his eyes off whatever progress she was making towards consciousness. "Kate, honey, please open your eyes for me-"

And then she was looking at him. Looking straight at him, framed by those dark lashes, her gaze in shadows. Her fingers smoothed out along his neck and he dipped his lips to her fingertips, kissed them because suddenly he had lost every word, struck dumb by her resurrection.

Her thumb caught his bottom lip and brushed out and he realized she was finding tears, catching them against his skin. She must be conscious enough to know him, know the sensations under her fingers, and she was here. She was here.

Castle choked out a breath and fell down to her, pressing his face to her shoulder. Her fingers continued to stroke, trapped at his side, skimming under his shirt and along his ribs.

"Rick." Her voice was thin as paper.

He turned his head and pressed his lips to her cheek, cradling her neck, and her eyes closed once and came open again. He smoothed down the a-line where he'd gotten too close, tried not to let her see how damn scared he was. She was watching him, and now she was gathering energy to speak.

"No, don't," he murmured. "Just keep breathing, sweetheart. Just breathe and stay with me."

She straightened her fingers and her nail caught the pocket of his jeans. Her jaw went slack, and he felt her suck in a deeper breath, felt the way her body worked against her despite it. He took her hand again, crowding close, trying not to mess with the chelation machine, stroked her matted hair away from her forehead.

She closed her eyes, but her hand around his tensed, as if she was promising him something. As if she was holding on. He brushed a kiss to her cheek, to the corner of her eye, and used his free hand to stroke her temple, along her forehead, using the motion to hide the stuttered beat of his own heart. He didn't say anything more, didn't want to demand more than she'd already given him.

After a time, her eyes opened again, staring into him. Her throat worked. "Feel bad."

"I know, baby." He traced her eyebrow with his thumb and combed his fingers back through her shorn hair, cupping her face. "He's got you on dialysis and chelation therapy. Supposed to take the toxins out of your blood."

"Feel bad," she mumbled.

"I know you do," he crooned. "I know. I'm so sorry, honey. Should have been paying better attention."

"Not you," she murmured, but she was struggling to keep her eyes open. When that dark gaze settled and caught his own, her eyes seemed to burn. "Love you. Love you."

"Oh, God." He leaned in and kissed her forehead, trying not to crush her. "Love you so much, Kate. So much. You're gonna be okay now. You are." It wasn't good-bye. He refused to say good-bye. "It was the pills, but it's going to be just fine, honey."

And he realized he was actually starting to believe it, now that her eyes were open, now that she was watching him like she _craved_ him. She needed him, wanted him close; she was going to make it.

"Sorry," she whispered. "Didn't know. Sorry-"

"Hey, no, no. It's okay," he murmured. "It's not your fault either, love. Just - we didn't know and we - it's okay now. It's going to be okay. This will help and we'll make you better."

Kate was struggling, her breathing clipped at the end, and Castle tried to keep from smothering her, tried to give her space to draw in a deeper breath. He sat up, and she clutched his hand with a weak strength.

"No," she cried softly. "No, don't leave."

"Oh God, Kate, I'm not going anywhere. Ever. Not leaving you."

"Crawl in with me," she rasped. He could hear her heart pushing to beat faster, her need for him struggling in her. "Crawl in."

"Baby, I can't. The lines-"

"Please."

He shouldn't. He really shouldn't. But he gave up resisting, slid his legs down alongside hers on the narrow cot. He moved so that she was between him and the wall, safely surrounded, hidden from view of the front door.

"This is the best I can do. I don't want to pinch the lines or jostle you, honey." But God, it felt good to be so close, like he could protect her somehow, like she couldn't possibly slip away if he was right here, if he felt every heartbeat through the thin layer of her skin and into his own chest.

She pressed the back of her hand to his stomach, tucked her fingers into the waist of his jeans. "I can hear your heart," she murmured. "Right close."

Maybe she could. Maybe that would remind her own heart how it was supposed to go.

"Sleep, sweetheart. I'm right here."

* * *

She came back heavy. Her weighted body dragged, sank into the cot.

Castle was beside her, close. He was close. She would be okay if he was here.

It was hard to breathe.

He kept away from her body like he knew how heavy everything was. Like he knew the least amount of pressure on her ribs and the whole thing would collapse. Snow building on the roof, ready to cave in. It was so hard to breathe when everything was this heavy.

"Kate?" His voice called her up.

"Here," she husked. Her voice was no longer hers; her body not under her control. She couldn't understand where she was, but he was with her.

He let out a shaky breath and his thumb skated the slope of her neck to her hair. His arm was warm at her side; he was perched there like he was afraid of crushing her.

"Kate?"

It seemed vital that she stay awake, that she not fall asleep, but it was so hard to keep it together. Every time her eyes closed, her body unspooled and drifted away.

"Kate?" His heart was pounding so hard that the cot was shaking.

She struggled to bring a hand up, fingers clutching the wrinkled softness of his dress shirt. "Hmmm, yeah," she finally croaked.

"Sorry," he muttered. "Sorry, you should sleep if you-"

"No."

It was important she was here, stayed here. He was - sounding a little desperate. She couldn't figure out how long it had been since the last time her eyes had been open. He sounded like he was falling apart. She was heavy and leaden enough to keep him together if only she could stay.

"Kate, just..."

"Here," she murmured, voice still a useless thing. "Not leaving."

His other hand gripped her knee, hard enough to bruise, and she felt the radiating shock of pain all through her bones, a fierce thing that burned through the haze in her head.

"That's good," she whispered. "Do that again."

"What?"

"Keeps me awake."

"No, love, you should rest. I'm sorry. I panicked when you - stopped breathing for a second. Just-"

"Keep me awake," she pleaded. "I don't - don't know what happens if I fall asleep. It's too heavy. My heart hurts."

"I'm so sorry." His fingers squeezed again and she realized it was reflex, that he didn't want to hurt her more, but he couldn't help himself. She knew him, knew what he needed, and the pressure of his fingers at her knee was a mere siphon, and hardly enough to help ease his desperation.

She couldn't fall asleep. It would be bad. Bad for them.

"Keep squeezing," she said. Her tongue was heavy too, her lips refused to work right. "Tell me."

"We're doing something called advanced chelation." His voice was warm at her ear; she fought to breathe. "It draws the metal out of your system. Metal byproducts. I don't - really know exactly. There's an element of dialysis to it. For the toxicity."

Toxicity. That's what he'd called it. Toxicity. She felt the weight of every element she'd piled on her system, the drag of vitamins and minerals building up in her body, hopelessly dense; she didn't want to be crushed beneath the weight of them. "I don't want to sleep."

"You've got another chelation treatment in two hours," he said quietly. "After that, you can sleep, Kate. You should sleep. You need to rest and build back strength. We can't - God, we can't stay here."

She didn't know where here was.

"Don't let me fall asleep," she whispered again, twisting her fingers in his shirt because she had no strength to grip. "Don't let me-"

"Okay, okay," he murmured, fingers petting the hair at her nape. Soothing, light. "Stay awake with me. Two hours, honey. You can do it."

She let out a shaky breath.

She could do it.

If she fell asleep, she wouldn't come back again.


	6. Chapter 6

**Close Encounters 22**

* * *

_Talk to me_, she'd said.

He was trying, but his words were getting tangled up. His brain didn't seem to be able to process.

Watching her die was the worst. Was - life-changing. Watching her die had altered something in him, broken something vital. Now he knew why she'd flown to Tunisia, to his father, desperate for the full details of the program that would save his life. Now he felt it in his guts like a hand twisting him up. After she'd watched him dying in her front of her, helpless, she had done whatever it took to prevent it from ever happening again.

He'd do the same. He would do nothing less that anything.

He had a faint hope that it was being reversed, that death had been staved off. She seemed to rally for him, come back to herself every time he called her name. She came back. So long as she did, he thought they were going to survive the night.

"What are you doing?"

Castle flinched and shot his eyes to the door, saw his father standing just inside. He'd let Black leave to scrounge up more of the chelating agents, but he hadn't heard him come back inside. Hadn't even heard him at the door.

Wait. No. Castle had _locked_ that damn door; he'd taken the key from his father and kept it.

Black should've had to knock for entry like last time, but apparently his father had gotten another key.

Fuck, he didn't need this right now. This was too much.

"Are you trying to crush her? Get off the bed."

"No," he got out. "It helps." He had, actually, been about to get off the cot solely because he despised feeling vulnerable in front of the man. But he wouldn't now. It was a point of honor to stay flat out and defenseless, his back to the door, with Kate sheltered by his body.

Her eyes opened. She gasped a sharp breath that caused the heart monitor to stutter, and he couldn't help leaning into her. She was struggling to stay calm, he could tell, and she turned to bury her face into his arm. Her lips worked, and he heard faintly, _It helps._ Like an echo.

If she had to be vulnerable and flat out and defenseless in front of his father - like she always seemed to be - then Castle would be as well. He'd throw his body as a blockade before hers. "It helps if I'm near," he said, not looking at Black.

"Helps who?" his father sneered. "Her? Or you. Because her body's systems were in shock not six hours ago, and it can't make it easy to breathe with you draped over her like that."

Kate's fingers curled in his shirt, silently imploring. _Don't leave me._

"It helps both of us," he said. He was sure on that point, couldn't be swayed. Besides, he wasn't draped over her. She had room; he had avoided all of the lines going into her arms, and he was only stretched on his side so that Kate had most of the cot. "Is it time for the next round?"

"You have another hour," Black said, studying them on the cot. "I came because you should look at the news."

"The news?"

"The local news is reporting that two women were attacked in the park. They're saying that one woman was shot during the abduction of the second. Diane Jolin is at American, like you said, but they've given out descriptions of you both. Probably that Good Samaritan in the park. Which means your faces are circulating the damn news, and I don't know how long we're going to be safe here."

Kate's fingers tightened around his shirt, nails digging hard. Castle drew his arm up to cup the side of her face, as if he could hide her from his father, from the truth. "When... when is she stable enough to move?"

"I don't know. This advanced chelation therapy takes a lot out. I'll check her levels. But regardless, you'll have to leave here soon. You'll have to take that risk, Richard. You can't stay."

Why not? It wasn't like they were - either one - going outside this nasty apartment. It wasn't like anyone could see them. "We'll be right here until she's stable."

Kate's head was turned into him, eyes hidden, but she stiffened at that statement. He wasn't backing down; they weren't messing around with this. They'd stay until it was okay for her to move.

"If the police have your descriptions, Richard, then so does the Collective. It means the Collective know exactly who they're looking for, and they have the resources to _scour_ the country for you."

"We're not moving."

"Richard, your faces are being handed around _Interpol_. They think you abducted Beckett-"

"Interpol should know better. Talk to Hunt. He's yours."

Black's eyes glittered but he said nothing more, merely moved into the room and sank down at the kitchen table. Castle twisted to look and saw that his father had scrounged a laptop from somewhere and he was setting it up.

Castle was losing all of his advantages - and he had the supreme disadvantage of not being able to leave this damn room. He couldn't go out and supply himself like his father was doing, not when it meant leaving Beckett here with him.

And if he had thought it was going to be impossible with Beckett unconscious, it was somehow worse with her conscious. It would _be_ worse.

So he couldn't.

"Don't go," she husked then. Straight into his ear so that her voice dragged sensation down his spine.

He grunted and shook his head but she wasn't looking at him. "Kate," he whispered, nudging the side of her face with his nose. "I'm not. I'm not going anywhere."

"Have your face," she murmured. She sounded lost, and he could see that she was no longer struggling against sleep. "Don't go out there."

"I'm not leaving you," he promised softly. "Won't leave you."

"Don't go," she husked, but she was already falling away from him.

* * *

"How is it?" he said.

She had trouble keeping her eyes open, even with him right there. "It's..."

She had powerful antioxidants flowing through her blood, binding to heavy metals, and a kind of dialysis going on as well. She had things being done to her that she didn't know _what_, and neither did Castle, and she wasn't sure it was good, but she was too out of it to know what better to do. Had to trust. So hard to trust, but she had to.

"Feels cold," she said finally. The blood went out and into a machine beside the bed, it was treated, and then it came out again, but there was stuff in it this time, chelating agents, there were things going on. "Fingers are..."

"What's wrong?" he said sharply.

She opened her eyes, stared at him a moment. "No, not... wrong. Strange."

"This time it's five hours," he said softly. "It's long, I know, but-"

"It's okay," she mumbled. Suddenly her chest was constricting. Suddenly the coldness in her veins was pushing down into her chest and freezing up her lungs, her breath laboring. "Cas-"

"I got you. You're okay. Dizzy?"

"Can't - breathe-"

"You can, you can, Kate. You can breathe. Just feels like it, with the way the blood goes out and back in again. I promise you can breathe."

Panic attack? She didn't like that, not right now; she had to be better than that. Black was in the room, there _was_ no other room to be in, and he'd pulled a chair up to a kind of freezer in the kitchen and was doing something on a laptop - she'd seen that, heard the keys clicking - but she didn't like not knowing where he was, what he was doing.

"Kate, _breathe_."

She sucked in one breath, a second right after it, heard the heart monitor give that warning beep that she was messing up her rhythm.

Breathe, damn it. Don't do this right now.

"Okay, there you go, there you go."

"Feel - feel bad," she admitted, closing her eyes. The breath came in again, a short stutter where she couldn't figure out how to let it out again. "Castle."

"I know, honey. I'm so sorry. I got you."

She struggled to keep from crying; God, it felt wrong. It all felt wrong. Strange, to have her blood cold and trickling through her body like it was leaking everywhere.

"Talk - talk to me," she rasped, opening her eyes again. "Tell me. A story."

"A story," he said, blank stupidity across his face.

She wanted to laugh; she felt the urge in her chest but it wouldn't get out, so instead she unwound her fist from the blanket and scraped her fingers down to his shirt, caught it. "Talk to me so I can't - can't imagine the worst."

"No, no, you're going to be fine now. There is no worst. We've been through the worst and this is going to make you better. You're here, aren't you?"

"Talk to me," she begged. Black was here and she had no - no ability - no recourse - nothing to sit her up and stand her on her feet before him. Defenseless. "Talk. Debrief. Something."

"Okay. Of course. A debrief. I will, I am. We're in Belgium, little town in the middle of the country, outside Charleroi. There's an arrest warrant out for me, thinking I shot Jolin and kidnapped you, but I put in a message to the Office and they're circling the news among the three-letter agencies, no details, just that it was an official event."

She sucked in a deeper breath, eased it out again, watched Castle as he fell into the story. Her body hurt like it was one vast bruise being pressed down on by an unseen hand. "What else?"

He hesitated at her question and she fisted her fingers in his shirt, harder. He looked like he was trying to figure out what not to say.

"Black," she whispered, prompting him.

"He's in the kitchen. There's not - a lot of space here."

"Where - where are my clothes?" she rasped, felt the whine in her voice as hysteria tried to close over her.

Castle was there immediately, hovering over her, fingers touching, soothing, tucking the blanket around her. "Had to take them off to get the atropine in the first time. But you're okay. Nothing - nothing happened, Kate, nothing-"

"God," she gasped, closing her eyes. She'd only thought, right now, she didn't want to be in her underwear with Black in the apartment, but that was... worse, that was worse, and now she was shivering.

"No, baby, please don't, please don't-"

She tried to untangle her hand from the blanket and lift it over her eyes, but Castle caught her wrist and pressed her arm down.

"You can't. I'm sorry. Arterial lines are in both arms, love. They don't take to jostling - not these. They're not the ones we needed; had to make do."

She trembled. She felt sick; she might throw up.

"I'll get you clothes. I'll get you some clothes, Kate. Okay? Just don't - don't - I have a t-shirt. You could - after the chelation, I'll help you slip it on, okay? Here, hang on."

She opened her eyes to see him pulling off his own t-shirt and draping it over her. God, she was crying, and she couldn't stop, and his face was falling, broken-hearted, but no, no, Castle-

"Thank you," she choked out. She wanted to hold on to him; she wanted him to hold her, but she wasn't supposed to bend her arms.

Castle grunted a curse and came down to her, the sharp bristle of his cheek against hers, and he was so tender in his soft hug that it hurt.

"Don't cry," he was demanding. His voice was cracked. "Don't cry. I can't - can't take it when you cry."

"Sorry," she gulped. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Don't, don't-"

She sucked in a deeper breath, another, felt it firming up in her now even with the cold trickle of ice in her veins. "Shirt smells like you," she finally said. "Smells good."

Castle pressed his forehead to hers, hard, and she let her eyes close, let herself tumble under the surface.

* * *

He was making a list. Inventory.

A gun. Ammunition. He might need to find that damn knife his father had used to butcher her hair, but most important was getting _them_ some firepower. That was top of his list.

Clothes for her. Jeans and a heavy jacket, because the weather was unpredictable this time of year and because he never knew exactly when it _was_ cold. Not anymore. And not for the forseeable future. He'd be taking straight serum, no alterations, and it bumped up his internal temperature.

But in lieu of jeans and a jacket, she definitely needed a shirt, probably a pair of shorts, a heavier blanket. The apartment didn't have heat, and she was shivering in her sleep despite his nearness.

His own t-shirt was draped over her, a black shadow against the pale slash of her face in the dim light. He'd thought to move to the stool and wait out her sleep - the chelation machine was still going - but she was too cold without him. Especially on the regimen, his body heat was so much greater than hers and he knew she needed it right now.

So he stayed, stretched out on his side with Kate tucked into him, and he schemed of ways to get the things they needed.

He'd have to leave the apartment. He didn't want to, but a weapon, some clothes, those were completely necessary. And if he could be good enough, if he could make himself strong enough, he'd do it. He'd do it for her because she needed some damn protection here, some _clothes._ He should do it._  
_

He just couldn't.

He couldn't leave her here with Black. Maybe it was chickenshit of him, maybe he was making a huge tactical error here, but he couldn't leave her defenseless with his father. It was all emotional, and he knew it, but he consoled himself with the knowledge that there was an element of physical health too. It would be very bad if she had a panic attack because she was alone with Black.

The chelation-dialysis therapy was still underway; she had another hour or so before they could unhook the tubes and allow her a little more freedom. Still, she wouldn't get to remove the a-lines. Black had been dissatisfied with them, not happy that these were the only offering, and that worried Castle.

If his father thought the lines were troubling, then it had to be bad.

Clothes, a weapon. Find that knife, maybe, first order of business.

"Castle?"

He lifted onto his elbow and hovered over her. "Hey, there, babe." She gave him something like a smile and he stroked his fingers down her temple and to her neck. "You look better."

She let out a breath; she seemed too exhausted to find amusement, but it was close. "Feel jittery."

"Logan said you might."

"Logan?" she cried out. Her eyes slammed shut, like she was terrified of her own emotional response right now, but he understood. He got it. She wanted to not be here, anywhere but here, and the name of someone back home was enough to unsettle her.

"I'm talking with the team," he assured her. "They're on this, honey. We're not alone out here."

She was taking small breaths and she gave him a kind of nod, but she didn't say anything. He found himself studying her face, the flutter of her lashes, the way her eyes darted under her lids, waiting for a sign from her.

If she had felt any better at all, she would be pissed with him for staring. He knew it, but he couldn't stop.

"You warm enough?" he said finally. He was trying to keep the bulk of his body between her and Black in the kitchen, though he knew she could see straight to the doorway and see the shape of Black beyond. "You need anything?"

"Little cold," she admitted. Her voice sounded heavy; he knew she was going to fall back into sleep. But he needed her focus just a little while longer.

"Kate, I need you to help me."

Her eyes flared open, blinking at him in confusion. "Okay."

"We don't have any weapons - they're gone, I lost the guns. He's got at least one gun and a knife - I had it at one point but it's gone again and I think he took it back. I - do you hear me?"

She stared up at him, swallowed. "Hear - hear you."

"I need to acquire a weapon. A change of clothes. Black will have to get food soon, which means he won't be here. When he goes, I'll go after him. But that leaves you here alone. With no one."

Kate's face crumpled but she didn't say anything; he could fee her taking deep breaths, as deep as she could get them, staving off a panic attack or maybe just talking herself into solitary confinement.

Castle cupped the side of her face and softly brushed his lips over her eyebrow. "I won't go unless you can do it. I won't leave you with him, that's for damn sure, but I do need to go at some point. I need to be able to defend you when we're vulnerable like this."

He could feel the hard gulp of her throat. He kissed the corner of her eye, humming softly so she knew he was here, could be certain of him.

"Get me a sweatshirt?" she whispered.

He let out a laughing breath, so damn relieved, so _proud_. "Yeah, love. Anything you want."

"I'm cold, Rick. Deep cold."

"Okay, honey, okay. I'll get you something warm, warm you up." He nudged closer, but he didn't want to interrupt the lines, the blood still cycling slowly into her vessels and back to her heart. So far - and it scared the shit out of him every time he wondered - so far she was mentally sound. So far there was no break, no fragmented thinking.

So far it hadn't done any damage to her brain. Cold? They could totally handle that.

"When he next makes a food run, Kate, I'll go right after him. He won't know I'm leaving. I won't let him know I'm going."

"They know your face," she murmured, look up at him again, concern etching lines between her eyes. "Don't go out there if you'll-"

"I will _not_ get caught. Do you hear me? It is vital that I not leave you here alone with him. That will not happen. I will be back, Kate. I'll be back with at least a weapon."

"My sweatshirt," she murmured, and he could see her concentration was drifting. "Hooded sweatshirt."

He stroked the side of her face and her eyes slipped closed. "Yeah, babe, just that. I'll be back before you know I'm gone. Can you-?"

"I can do it," she sighed, but even then her words were draining away into sleep.

* * *

The tubing detached; Black was even taking the lines out. She could feel them in her blood vessels, feel the snaking line withdrawing. She was wracked with shudders, but she couldn't even control them.

Black's fingers were on the inside of her arm, at the crook of her elbow, delicate. She was going to throw up. She avoided looking at his face, averted her eyes to Castle, who was perched at the end of the cot, hovering.

He reached out and circled his fingers around her ankle, squeezed. She tried to keep from shifting on the bed, crawling away from the touch of Black's hands as he withdrew the lines. The machine was at the head of the cot, out of her view, silent now and still.

They were supposedly going to get her new a-lines. Ones that 'fit' - whatever that meant. She half-wondered if Black was making shit up, but most of her concentration was on not completely losing it at the touch of his fingers on her.

She had all her blood back in her own body, but she still felt like it was leaking out of her, like all her energy was drained. Panic was fluttering in the bottom of her stomach, the place where the catheter was installed had begun to itch and the bag was cold against her leg where it was halfway filled.

She felt wretched and exhausted and not even the indignity of the catheter could make her want to get out of bed, but Black, God, his hands on her and Castle looking at her like he was going to cry-

"There we are," Black murmured. "That's one down."

And now the other arm. He was pressing his thumb hard into the place where the line had been, and she felt it like a deep bruise, like her elbow joint itself was collapsing.

Then the pressure was gone and her skin itched with the press of tape and gauze, and she blinked slowly through the sensation of being half undone.

Castle's fingers squeezed around her ankle, her only warning before Black had shifted the bed to one side so that he could get between her and the wall, get to her other arm.

Her eyes startled down to Castle and he gave her a grim smile, _hang on_ in his eyes, and she did, she was, she was keeping it together.

Barely.

She was so tired, so tired, but she couldn't possibly fall asleep with Black breathing above her and his hands working the arterial line slowly, slowly, out of her blood vessel. She knew it could be bad, knew the line was too big - he had wanted something smaller and finer, more delicate - and she had to stay absolutely still.

Couldn't be true, couldn't it? Was that a real thing? She felt sick down in her guts. She might throw up.

It felt like fishing wire, wire catching on the inside of her arm, dragging out. She had an overwhelming urge to reach over and grab at it, trap the thing in her arm that was moving. She was going to scream, it was bubbling up inside her like terror-

"Kate."

Her eyes shot to Castle and she saw him crawling up towards her, fingers pressed to her shin, her knee, her thigh, her hip, steady and mindful. She took great gulps of his air, the close space where his body was near hers, and her bandaged arm, though noodle-limp, came up and let her hook her fingers in his belt loops.

"Where's your shirt?" she murmured, caught by warm skin and the broad expanse of his bare chest.

He glanced down once, as if he hadn't remembered, but then he leaned in, taking her hand, slowly bending over her unbending arm, dusting a kiss to the back of her hand. "Draped over you at the moment, love."

"Oh, that's right," she choked out. The scent of him dusted her nose; she breathed a little deeper and found the terror sliding away, slick and cold, dribbling out of her. "My arm hurts."

"I bet it does," he sighed. He spoke so softly, so quietly, that she barely heard him. But Black shot him a look, a half-look, and Kate turned her head purposefully away from his slow and agonizing work.

Like fishing around in her arm. She clutched Castle's hand tighter and he gave her a broken smile that touched something in her, something deep and needy, and it eased the terror another little inch, warmed the cold.

She wished she could be completely ridiculous and bury her head in his neck and not come out, but Black preyed on weakness. Black was right here and he'd know; he'd use that somehow. Use it against them.

"There we are," Black said then. His finger came down hard on the inside of her elbow and she stiffened with the pain, but Castle was holding her other hand, holding on to her. All she had to do was steadily watch him, just him, just her husband.

The tape and gauze came down and then Black's fingers removed, the arterial lines were done, the machine silent.

"Is it over?" she rasped. Her voice sounded strained, like she'd been yelling. She felt it too, the hoarseness of all that terror.

"No more chelation. At least not for a while."

"Logan said no blood tests for six hours," Castle murmured. "It doesn't give correct results. In the meantime, I'll start saline and get you some electrolytes."

She nodded, her throat working, her heart thundering and the heart monitor giving lie to her blank face. Black had a look she didn't like, pleased satisfaction, but she could do nothing to school her racing pulse.

"I've got to get supplies. New a-lines. Food," Black said, standing slowly. The cot suddenly jerked back to the wall under his power - had he _kicked_ it? - and Castle had that hard and deadly look as Black moved away.

Kate squeezed her husband's hand. Not worth it, not right now when he needed to leave too, leave and get them their own supplies. Castle held his tongue and Black glanced between them, long and measuring, but Kate closed her own eyes and just tried to breathe.

Breathe through the panic that was scrabbling in her guts despite Castle's grip on her hand.

"I could be as long as two hours. Richard, keep an eye on her blood pressure. If it drops, then the arteries were cut in the removal by your damn a-lines."

With that, Black headed for the door.

* * *

"He only said it to freak you out and keep you here," she said.

Castle paced. He'd reclaimed his shirt because he knew he had to leave, but she was shivering on the cot, a knee cocked under the blanket. She looked so small, thin - too thin - and her eyes were shadowed.

"I can't leave you alone-"

"You're running out of time. He said as long as two hours, but I bet it's more like one," she rasped. Her voice was coming and going. He got every other word, but he knew what she was saying.

"But if the lines did nick-"

"They didn't. You need to go. Get me clothes, Castle."

He crossed his arms over his chest, furiously not happy, deeply not happy so that it felt like a wound, this need, this un-fillable need. He just wanted this over and his wife home and everyone safe and not this. Not this.

"I'm just going to sleep," she said then. Her words were faint; she might already be drifting. "Go. A gun, Castle. Get me a gun."

He sighed and scraped a hand down his face. "You will not be having a gun, Kate Beckett. A sweatshirt. Not a gun."

"Pocket," she mumbled, eyes slowly opening.

"What?"

"Front pocket. A gun."

"_Maybe_," he stressed, but his guts were churning. Maybe she was right. Something to defend herself.

"Go."

Castle came to her first, because she was right, he had to go, and he kneeled down at the side of the cot and kissed her softly. She roused, fingers knocking into his ribs like a butterfly, and he caught her hand, kissed the base of her fingers.

"Love you," she murmured. "You're being very brave."

Brave? God, he felt as terrified as he ever had. "I'll be back in under an hour," he promised. He wouldn't say _I love you_ back, not like good-bye. It wasn't a good-bye.

Her eyes opened. "If I'm not here, I stepped out for coffee."

"You're not funny," he gruffed, but it _had_ caught him a little, a tickle in his chest. He found his lips twisting at the corner. She smiled, faint and delicate a thing, but smiling.

"I am funny," she murmured. "Sweatshirt with a gun. Go."

So Castle left one last kiss and found his feet under him, his body heading for the door.

But most of the rest of him was back there with her, desperate and terrified.


	7. Chapter 7

**Close Encounters 22**

* * *

Agent Castle was stalking his prey: a dark youth in a leather jacket with a swagger and a bulge in his pants.

Gun.

Probably a .45 by the shape of it.

Castle kept to the shadows. The night had come down hard so it was easy, more than easy, and the swagger didn't falter, didn't even notice.

Castle had twenty-three minutes before he needed to be back at that apartment. Kate had been right - Black was fucking with him, with them both - and this was, in all likelihood, something of a test. He'd been careful to look for trip wires, for the lone hair in the door jamb, for evidence he would have disturbed something by leaving. They weren't in sight, but Black was going to know that Castle had left when he suddenly weapons and clothes started showing up.

Castle had the clothes already, tucked into a plastic bag clamped down against his chest to keep it from rustling. He'd found a pair of loose pajama pants and a pair of jeans - all stolen from an upcycling store blocks away from here. The hooded sweatshirt for her had been hanging on the wash-line on some college co-ed's back stoop, and then he'd scored - a plaid shirt and a sweater for him that had been folded on top of a dryer inside a laundromat across town.

But Black's safehouse apartment building was in a government-subsidized neighborhood that definitely wasn't safe at night for the impoverished people forced to live here. But he had only twenty minutes, so Castle was going to have to take the gun from closer by.

Didn't matter; this swaggering fool wouldn't be reporting it missing, and whatever he intended with it would be worse anyway.

Castle did the bump and lift, stumbling at the crosswalk with a slurred apology in French, hands patting down the gang kid even as he pretended to right them both. The kid was posturing, shouting back in German; too late, Castle noticed the swastika tattooed on the back of his shaved neck.

Ah. Shit.

Well. He didn't mind taking on a couple of skinheads. It would definitely help clear some of Castle's constant and furious anger.

And sure enough, skinhead reached for his weapon - which wasn't there - and his gangster rage flared up and over in accusation. Of course, the idiot couldn't have any real thought for his own dire predicament, not with his .45 now safely in another man's hands. Castle didn't bother to make the skinhead aware of it either, nor the idiot's friends, and he simply lashed out.

A boot to the knee of the friend, a blade chop to the throat of the one on the left, and finally an elbow to the face of the skinhead still fumbling for his gun. The kid with the dislocated kneecap went down, but not all the way, and Castle had to kick up and into his throat - he was done, gone, dead most likely.

He couldn't find it in him to care.

Castle twisted against the hand that came to grab him, close quarters now with two of them, and he jammed his foot down onto a bent calf, scraping all the way to the achilles tendon until the number two screamed. Skinhead without his gun threw a punch while Castle was rolling away, and he caught it in his side without effect, coming up on his feet, not even breathing hard.

Skinhead checked himself then, that slight pause of being outmanned if not outnumbered, and two were down, one of them with a deadly stillness. Skinhead shifted his eyes to Castle with real fear, but Castle was too far gone, too filled with that cold and professional rage, and he lunged, offensive strike, dedicated to ending the encounter.

Skinhead's neck snapped back with the momentum of Castle's jab, and his body crumpled to the sidewalk, immediately dead, no remorse.

He could see a swastika had been tattooed on the front of the skinhead's throat as well as the back of his neck, and Castle was glad he was dead. He even, for a second, wished it had taken longer.

Castle checked the pockets for ammunition, found another magazine helpfully in the oversized jacket, a lethal-looking two-inch blade in the other pocket. He stuffed that into his own jeans, the gun carefully in his waistband, and then Castle stole the kid's shoes for the heck of it.

Small feet, but sturdy boots. Kate might fit into them, he'd have to lace them tightly, but better than nothing.

He jogged back the five blocks to the apartment building, now with a weapon and ammunition, a knife as well, and the super blood pumping through him. He also had the certainty that while his cold-hearted responses were largely his father's manipulative machinations, they were also his own brain's turning, churning, basted in the serum's anti-social effects and his wife's perilous condition.

But he didn't want the world in black and white, kill or be killed, not any longer. There were grays, there should have been reasons to let those boys live, there was supposed to be another way.

But he hadn't thought of it, not in the moment, and his own situation was dire and desperate enough that even still he couldn't think of a different way.

He only wanted to get back to Kate, keep Kate alive for one more day.

* * *

She was sitting up, sitting up with the blanket shrugged around her, when her husband came through the door. She'd struggled long and hard to get that way, damn it, and even though her cheek was mashed against the wall and her shoulder tucked in for support, she was at least facing the door.

But it was Castle, thank goodness, just Castle, though he didn't look at all pleased with her.

His face was dispassionate, but she saw the icy fury like chips in his eyes. Still he locked the door with the key behind him, tucked it into his back pocket as he came towards her. She didn't lie back down, couldn't really move to be honest, but she watched him as he came, just watched, silent.

His knuckles were bruised.

He sank down on the stool, elbows on his knees and his hand with a plastic bag between his legs, and he studied her.

She didn't answer the question there, the demand for an accounting, she didn't answer it at all.

He finally cleared his throat, dropped his gaze. "Sweatshirt." He let the bag fall from his fingers to the floor and he reached inside to withdraw a grey hoodie. She actually _liked_ it, which was stupid and beside the point, but it made a smile flicker across her face at the thought of her husband doing a little shopping.

Even under pressure, he knew what looked good. Even _stolen_, as it no doubt was, he was looking out for her.

She wondered, vaguely, if he knew the addresses of the people he'd stolen from, if later - if they had a later - would they be able to find a reckoning, money or a return...

"Beckett."

She dropped the blanket, and his eyes flicked fast over her, and then came back, longer, heat in them that was both grief and need, and she liked that better than the distance she'd seen when he had come inside.

The hoodie zipped, which made it easier to get on, but he leaned in to do it for her, his hands taking first one arm, sliding the sleeve up, while she struggled just to stay upright. She could hear her own breath in her lungs, the rasp as she tried desperately to keep from blacking out, tried just to breathe.

"I understand," he said finally in between the sounds of her own wheezing. "But don't do it again, Kate."

He understood that she had needed to be facing the door, at the least defenseless she could be. She knew he would, knew he'd be back first regardless, for her sake he would. But she hadn't been able to stay down, vulnerable; she couldn't.

His warm arm slid around her waist and eased her against his side. She fumbled her fingers toward the empty sleeve, and he helped her shrug the sweatshirt on, helped her get it comfortable. Automatically, she lifted a hand to her hair to pull it out from under the hood, but her fingers snagged her neck, and the blunt ends brushed the backs of her fingers.

She blinked, completely caught off guard, the world tilting.

His fingers caught hers, squeezing hard, drew her arm down to her side. "I'm sorry," he rasped.

Sorry?

Kate opened her mouth to ask, and then it snapped into place, the picture made clear. Her hair had been cut, that was all. She trembled, exhausted just sitting up against him, and she turned her face into his chest, closed her eyes.

"I'm so sorry," he croaked. "It was hopelessly matted, and tangling in the IV, getting into the place at your ribs where the atropine went in and he cut it. He chopped it off before I even knew-"

"Stop," she rasped, pressing her forehead hard into his chest. "Stop. Stop."

He was gripping her too hard, his mouth buried at her temple. "I'm so sorry, Kate, sweetheart, I'm so-"

"_Stop_."

In the sudden silence, there was the irregular shudder of her own breath in her lungs and below that, the frantic thump of his heart at her ear.

"Doesn't matter," she said. "Doesn't even matter."

"I should have-"

"No," she cried out, horrified at how she sounded, worse at how _he_ sounded. "No, no. It was too long, a mess, always getting tangled. Better now. It's better this way."

"But you love-"

"You, love you," she insisted, managing to get one arm around him now, barely able to hold on. "It was for you, how you liked to feel it, how good it felt when we were in bed and your fingers played... it was for you."

She would never have said it out loud if it hadn't come to this.

His hand crept up her back and his fingers buried into her hair at her nape, twirling first and then tugging, his palm warm, and she felt her shoulders ease, felt her body relax into him. It wasn't that short. It was fine.

She was only in a grey hoodie and underwear, but she had never felt safer.

* * *

"How do you feel?" he asked again.

Kate nodded, slowly slid her knee up. She'd been sore lying on her back for the last - however long - and now Castle was attempting to make a nice pillow. She ached everywhere, every joint felt like the bones were grinding together, but she wouldn't move.

"Grab my knee," she said finally. "Tug."

He let out a breath that wasn't a laugh but it was at least acknowledgment of her effort. He hooked two fingers behind her knee and slid her thigh up over his. It felt so good to curl up, to _not_ be on her back, but every muscle trembled and cramped, and her head was swimming even lying down.

She wasn't good. It definitely wasn't good.

"How's that?" he murmured.

"Good," she lied. Castle sighed again and his fingers trailed up her bare thigh, tucked under the material of her panties. She shivered and he rearranged the blanket over her, but she just curled deeper into the grey hoodie and the warmth of her husband's neck.

His arm came tighter around her shoulders and his fingers scratched her scalp. "Not much longer, Kate."

"I know," she sighed. She was already hurting, already swallowing down a rising nausea. But she also knew that vulnerably alone on her back wasn't going to feel much better.

"It's already been an hour and fifteen," he said. His fingers skimmed her hair, but his thumb was pressed to her spine as if for a touchstone. "Can't expect much more privacy."

"Yeah," she agreed. It was hard to keep track of conversation, plans, what-came-next. It was a struggle to keep breathing, to not absolutely fall apart, but she had to. She had to because his father was going to be back any moment.

"You sure you're okay?"

"Okay," she insisted, closing her eyes. Not okay, not at all okay, but she didn't want to be alone. God, she couldn't let go of him. Panic was already curled like a snake in her guts, waiting to devour her.

"Are you-" He stopped when she grunted and his fingers gripped her hair. "Okay, okay, sorry. I'll shut up."

She huffed, turning to press her nose into his armpit. He smelled awful. Good but awful. And the shaky-flop-sweat odor of his skin told her he'd been - he still was - scared to death.

She wished she could do something to reassure him; she couldn't reassure herself. She felt sick. She felt bad.

"Let me put you back," he murmured. "I can hear you breathing like a freight train."

Kate struggled for another breath and finally gave in. "Fine." Her body ached. God, it hurt. She couldn't pretend any more; it just hurt. "Castle."

"I _knew_ it was too much," he growled. He was already angling in the cot, easing her to her back. "Damn it, Kate. You're crying."

She was? She was. God. Everything was falling apart. The tears leaked down her cheeks, made worse by the fact that she absolutely didn't have it to lose, and Castle was just grim and pulling the blanket up, ignoring it.

It was easier to breathe on her back, even with the tears, and she swallowed down the ache in her throat, blinked hard.

Castle huddled over her, but she closed her eyes, tried to gulp it back, tried to just breathe without her ribs breaking off into her lungs. He didn't touch her, just arranged the IV line so it wasn't tangled, pulled the loose sleeve of the sweatshirt up higher so it wouldn't pull on the port.

When she opened her eyes, she saw him carefully not looking. Giving her the chance to utterly lose it in privacy - something that was pretty rare at the moment, cramped into this apartment with his father.

"Castle," she whispered.

His eyes finally cut to hers and she unwound her fingers from the blanket to slide in the crook of his arm. "I-"

The lock in the door thudded and the deadbolt slammed back into its housing. Castle jerked, his eyes widening, and she couldn't help clutching his arm.

"You're okay," he said quickly. "I promise. Don't even think about it, Kate."

He darted in and kissed her forehead, hard, and then rose to his feet, tall and broad a wall between her and what was coming in through that door.

* * *

Black crossed his arms and settled back in the chair. He had pulled it out from where he'd set up his little office, the laptop on the freezer in the kitchen, and he had put it against the wall, business-like and efficient and entirely putting on a show.

Castle wasn't inclined to pay the admittance price for a ticket, but he also saw how he was stuck. Black had Kate under some kind of 'advanced' therapy, doing things to her that not even Boyd and Threkeld could quite follow, but it _had_ saved her life.

Was saving her life. She was laid out on her back on the cot, eyes closed even though she was conscious, unable to attend, unable to keep herself from _crying_ when he'd moved her, but she was alive.

More than they'd had before.

"Well?" Castle said, gesturing to the whole production. "I'm assuming you have something to say."

"You didn't run off to the Collective, I see," his father said. Had this been a test? Leaving Castle alone for an hour and a half to go on a supply run had been Black's way to see if his son would be an idiot and bring the Collective down on Kate?

He wasn't. He knew it was a really bad idea to approach Jolin after he'd shot her - even if she didn't know it had been him. A very bad idea to give away intimate knowledge of his family, his son, Kate.

At least Black was the enemy they knew.

"I didn't run to the Collective," he said, crossing his arms and imitating his father's grim stance.

Black's eye twitched. "But you did leave."

"So?"

Black's gaze drifted to Kate on the cot, the obviously new sweatshirt rolled up above the IV line. Castle ignored the pointed look - Black was only trying to rile him up - but he did stay within shifting distance. Shifting in front of Kate so that Black wouldn't be able to see her.

Black's eyes lingered.

Castle shifted.

Black smirked.

Castle didn't fucking care. So he'd stepped right into his father's manipulative shit, so what? He didn't want Black's eyes on her, Kate was scared, and it was time to get this started.

"So what's the plan," Castle said, gazing down at his father.

Black folded his hands, looking for all the world like he was precisely where he wanted to be. "The plan is - give her another four hours - check her levels. Add ingredients as needed."

"This isn't a damn recipe," Castle started, glowering.

His father held up a hand. "You don't have any idea what this involves. And yes, actually, Richard, it is much like a recipe. A little of this, little of that, stick your finger in the sauce and taste it."

His chest tightened; he had to work hard to keep from snatching his father up and shaking him for that comment. _Stick your finger in the sauce and taste it._

"You're gonna have to do better than that," Castle said. "My wife isn't an experiment."

"At this point, she is." Black gestured away his protest. "She fucked around with it, taking more, taking less, not doing what she should. And you - you weren't even paying attention, doing your own damn experiments, letting the program fall by the wayside, letting it wear off. So I don't think you're in a position to tell me how this is supposed to go. You obviously have no idea."

Castle gritted his teeth and breathed.

"Check her blood in four hours - make sure she's resting, sleeping if possible, during that time. We need a stable at-rest heart rate. No surges of adrenaline, no atropine injections. Keep her stable for four fucking hours, Richard. Can you do that?"

"I can do that," he muttered. He hoped. God, he hoped.

"After that, we'll see. She needs to be better. She has to be better than this."

"You think I don't know that?" Castle muttered, rubbing his hand down his face.

But Black only smirked, mouth poised for one more pronouncement, and Castle knew then that this entire conversation was about this one piece of news Black was about to lay on him.

And then he said it:

"The police have found the Fiat."

* * *

She woke to arguing, her consciousness skimming the crests of their sharp bursts. She couldn't open her eyes, but then she realized she'd fallen away from it, and then had gotten back because they were very close, he was close, that gravel and grit voice that made her heart rate jump.

"Make her stay still."

"Kate," a whisper, a touch on her cheek. "Kate, honey, it's okay. Let me."

She felt the pinch in the crook of her arm, whined when it burned. The chelation was supposed to be over. She couldn't do that again; it made her hurt. She hurt so much and Castle's fingers were crushing, and she jerked-

"No, no, hush, hush, Kate. It's okay."

Her arm burned and Black was too close; she struggled awake and Castle was there, he was there. "That hurts," she rasped.

"What hurts?" Castle stroked the hair back behind her ears, both hands; he was hovering over her. "What's wrong, honey?"

She blinked, unable to understand, thoughts coming slowly. She couldn't shift to look at her arm, but the pain had sublimated to just that general ache, and her breathing was easier.

"Kate?"

"I don't know," she said, tried clearing her throat. "What - day is this?"

His face darkened. "Sunday."

She didn't know what that _meant_. Sunday had no anchor. There had been a fight, fighting, and then she'd felt like her arm was being sawed in half, the blade sinking into her bones. But now here was her husband, with his elbows on the cot as he stroked the backs of his fingers against her cheeks, looking like there was no hurry.

"Was I crying?"

"Little bit," he whispered. "Took some blood. Black's running it, checking your levels."

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry."

"I'm not sad," she said, feeling stupid. Out of sync. Something wasn't right.

"I know, I know, honey. It's the chelation. Messing around with your blood always has some depressive side effects. Remember what King said when you had those iron treatments?" He rubbed his thumb on her bottom lip, smiled so gently; she tasted salt. "Just remember that it does get better."

Her lungs felt iron-clad, heavy. "Castle, I'm - I feel sick."

"Throw up sick or-"

"Don't know," she whispered, closing her eyes.

Castle was immediately scooping her up by the back of her neck, his other hand at her shoulder, and she was rolled to her side, breathing too fast into a metal coffee can.

She blinked, clutching Castle's arm, but she swallowed hard, again and again, and the nausea seemed to abate.

Castle didn't let go, just stayed with her until she finally lowered her cheek to the cold metal frame of the cot. He shifted so that his arm was at her back, supporting her, and his fingers came to her neck, leaving his other hand free. He reached a little and snagged the plastic bag her sweatshirt had been in, and he stuffed it down into the can.

"Just in case."

"Yeah," she whispered.

"It's the chelation-dialysis combo," he said. "I asked Boyd about it. He said it was probably going to make you feel pretty bad, like a one-two punch - but that would be a good sign, because it would mean you're getting better."

"Better," she echoed. Her throat was raw but her mouth was watering with the nausea. "Don't feel better."

"Feel worse?"

She inhaled slowly. "Maybe."

"That's good. Means your body is trying to recover rather than just..."

"Giving up?" She swallowed and nudged her head down against his forearm where he was bracing himself against the cot. "Not gonna give up."

"Appreciate that," he murmured. His kiss dusted her eyelid.

"Can we - not be here?" she said finally. She opened her eyes to him. "I feel good enough to - move to-"

"Kate."

"I don't want to be here," she said, her mouth twisting. And even just saying it - just hearing the words come out of her mouth - she knew she wasn't anywhere close to leaving this place. Not when she couldn't even control her damn anxiety, her grief, the immaturity of not feeling good.

"Kate, I'd give anything to get you the hell out of here."

"I know," she said tightly, breathing through the urge to cry. "I know. I'm sorry. Forget it."

"Hey, no, when-"

"Richard."

She jerked, eyes flaring open to find his father standing just over Castle's shoulder. But her husband didn't move, didn't turn around, only gave Kate a measuring look. Reassurance, promise, certainty.

She took a calming breath and Castle eased her to her back on the cot. Then he grabbed the stool and put it at the head of the bed, sank down purposefully, hands on his knees.

"What's the score?" he said.

Black set his jaw. "Dehydration. Potassium levels have dropped. B12 has dropped - which I don't understand. And now I'm seeing arsenic."

"Arsenic?" Castle rasped.

"What does that mean?" she murmured, wanting to handle some of this, needing to handle it. She felt too disjointed, out of control. "Why arsenic?"

"I honestly don't know. It's probably another byproduct of the mitochondria processes. But that's a guess. Maybe it's a reaction to the chelation."

"But she can't have arsenic in her system," Castle said harshly.

"No. She can't. She won't survive arsenic toxicity anymore than she'd survive the others. We'll have to do another round of therapy, try a few different agents this time."

She closed her eyes at that news; the chelation made her feel sick. She didn't want to do it, but she understood that was all they had.

"Chelation," Castle muttered. "Another whole round?"

"Have to."

That didn't sound good. She didn't know why Castle had that fierce look on his face, like plans were being undone. "So what does that mean?" she said finally.

Suddenly Black was too close. It made her skin crawl, made sweat break out on her forehead.

"It means you can't be moved," Black sighed. "At all. For at least eight more hours, probably a full twelve."

She just wanted to get out of here, go - somewhere away. Couldn't she do all this some other place? Without Black.

"Castle," she started, but he gripped her hand and shook his head.

Castle wouldn't move her if Black said she couldn't be moved. No one wanted to be here, no one wanted this kind of intimate close quarters, Black was usually stuck in the kitchen with his laptop and the blood testing machine, while Castle was in the living room, checking the windows and the street below obsessively - or hovering over her.

But hovering over her couldn't keep his father from seeing her at her worst. And Black could be making it all up, all of it, because the chelation made her feel so very bad, God, she felt so bad, and they just didn't know. They couldn't know; Black was the one who had all the knowledge.

And then she realized that this lone cot was probably _Black's_ bed, when he had to hole up here, where he usually slept, and her heart skittered hard and painfully in her ribs.

"What are you doing?" Black snarled. "Stop that. Your heart rate is rocketing."

She bit the inside of her cheek and averted her eyes, but that was worse, a lot worse, and she couldn't catch her breath with him scowling at her.

"Richard, make her stop panicking. That's ridiculous."

"Maybe you shouldn't fucking loom over her," Castle snarled back. "Stop looking at her like you're _trying_ to kill her."

"I am _not_ trying to kill her," Black said, sounding exasperated. She just didn't know with him; she had no idea, and she really didn't like not even being able to move.

She really wanted out of here.

She was starting to feel dizzy. She knew it was a panic attack, but she could do nothing to stop it. She had no strength to stop it, no energy to fight; it would come over her and crash her out. But she couldn't fall asleep in the middle of a panic attack - that would be so bad, she'd have violent nightmares; she couldn't-

"Kate, Kate, honey, listen to me." Castle's face hovered over her, his eyes pleading. He blocked out the whole room like that. "Baby, shhh. It's okay. We'll leave the moment we can, but not right now. I want you to be able to survive off the IV before we go."

"Castle," she croaked, heard the way her voice cracked up. She was going to fall apart. She was already vibrating pain down to her bones-

"No, no, love. Hey, it's okay. Look at me. Just look at me." She realized her eyes were straining past him, and Castle turned around, his hands still cupping her neck. "Would you get the hell out of here? Just fucking leave it alone for now. This is more important."

The door closed and the light coming in from the kitchen was completely extinguished. Kate sucked in a breath through a chest that wouldn't expand, and then she felt Castle's fingers smoothing over her cheekbones, caressing. His lips touched her forehead.

"I got you, Kate. It's just a panic attack this time. Okay? Just a panic attack and we know how to deal with those. Breathe in and breathe out. Don't forget to let the breath go; I promise it will come back."

She let out the choked-up breath she'd stored in her lungs and heard the noise she made, but she couldn't help it. Her hands were damp and shaking, her chest squeezed together. This was the exact wrong time for this, and she hadn't had panic attacks this bad since before James-

"James," she gasped. It was _Sunday_. They were supposed to go home. "Oh, God."

"Hey, it's okay. He's with your dad. He's fine. You can breathe, Kate. You pull it in and let it out. Honey, I need you to breathe for me."

She clutched at his arms and tried to focus on his voice. Fought to find him, to focus on him, just him.

Slowly, the free-floating anxiety moved off her chest and drained down to circle her spine, making her fingers tingle with numbness, her legs. She knew that feeling though; she'd had it before. She was fine - going to be fine - a panic attack couldn't kill her. It couldn't kill her.

Today was Sunday; they should have been going home.

"You and me, Kate," he was murmuring at her ear. "Breathe in and out. Let it out."

She felt the heaviness descend once more, the weight of her body sinking. "Rick."

"It's okay to sleep," he said softly. His lips brushed her ear, her jaw. "I got you, Kate. I won't let you go."

"I'll be better," she mumbled.

"I know you will. Take all the time you need, sweetheart. Just one more treatment and you know I won't let anything happen to you."

She knew he wouldn't. She knew he'd drag her right out of hell if he had to. She knew.

She was falling asleep.


	8. Chapter 8

**Close Encounters 22**

* * *

"We're going to try infusions. EDTA infusions, to be precise."

Black looked assured, already preparing a vial with steady hands, and Castle pulled out his phone and texted his team. No way was something else going in Kate that he didn't know about.

"It's standard, Richard."

"Well, you can wait until I confirm that." He kept one eye on his father while he messages Logan, but Black was sitting at the little table in the main room, concocting some potion or another. EDTA, Castle sent to Logan, waiting for more information, and sent a fast look to Kate over his shoulder. She was still asleep.

"It's not in my best interests to poison her," Black said stiffly.

"Well, I know that and she knows that, but somehow _you_ don't seem to know that," Castle snarked. "Since you were holding out on us. Chelation-dialysis just _happened_ to occur to you when I wanted to go to a higher authority."

"There is no higher authority," Black snapped. His fingers were clutched around the vial, his gaze filled with bitterness. Castle realized, a horrifying jolt, that his father's eyes were suddenly the same clear and cold grey as James's eyes.

Fuck. That wasn't right. That wasn't - when had that happened? When had he done that?

That wasn't Black's natural eye color. He had always changed aspects of his appearance, never wanting just one identifying set of characteristics, always altering his look. _Leave no mark_, his father had always said. _Leave no trace_. And so contacts to change his eye color, judicious dye, even salt and pepper, a beard in London and clean-shaven in Madrid and then a year or more of growing out his hair in China. Nothing was ever permanent about Black - hadn't that always been the issue?

But, fuck, fuck, grey eyes? - that had to be on purpose. Had his eyes been this startling winter sky the whole time they'd been in Paris? Castle couldn't remember. But Black was doing it for a reason, to give Castle a warning, to prove something.

To prove that Black knew. Knew their son, his face, what he looked like. Fucking hell.

Castle's knees were weak, but he damn well wasn't going to let it show. Black hadn't scored a hit. No. No, it was just another warning to Castle that he had to be proactive about this.

"You think you're in charge here, but you're not," Castle told him. He was going to be stubborn on that point; he wouldn't let Beckett's care be solely in his father's hands. "You think you have me under your thumb? No. We have a whole team. We have people who are looking out for our best interests."

"I am the one who began this. I am the one who has _your_ best interests at heart-"

"What heart? What damn heart? Don't even pretend that there's feeling there. Duty and honor - sure - I'll give you those, Black. But not feeling." Not feeling when Black was using his son's own eye color against him.

His father's face flinted, caught sparks in his nerve endings that showed in the ruined places. Damn, he looked bad. Castle forgot sometimes just how much damage he'd done to the man, just _how_ twisted the face, how destroyed the corner of the eye, the edge of the lip. He'd done that after his father had tried to murder his wife, and he didn't regret it, but it did stop him short.

It was a visible and potent reminder of just how far Black had already gone, and also a warning that Black's true intentions were not right out there on the surface. Hidden motives, secret agendas - his father had dealt in that world for far too long for Castle to believe he was now seeing everything.

So Black might be giving her something that would truly work, but he definitely had another goal in mind. Obviously, before the chelation, he'd had some idea of working 'heroically' to save his son's wife, only to ultimately fail in the hopes that Castle would - somehow - have been wooed to his side during the struggle.

Fat fucking chance. But it meant Castle couldn't take it at face value, not even the ruined half of Black's face, because the man might have figured out exactly how much to allow to the surface. In fact, Castle wouldn't put it past him.

So he kept his arms crossed and his gaze on his father until the vibration from the phone made him pull it out to see.

_Yes. A chelating agent. It should help. Arsenic build up can occur naturally, but a healthy body would be able to diffuse it. Infusion rather than dialysis sounds even better._

"Not dialysis," Castle said, lifting his head to pin Black with a stare. "Not dialysis just infusion."

"This time. Yes," Black answered. His jaw worked with a tic that Castle had always thought involuntary but now he wondered. Was the man showing his irritation on purpose, allowing Castle to see only the more obvious points of their contention? He didn't know. If it was purposeful, then Black was up to something.

Black was probably looking to work out _authority_. Hadn't he already said it? He wanted control over his son, over the program, over the whole damn _line_. Which meant James as well, by extension. Castle didn't like it, but it kept his son safe from Black, having him fall under his grandfather's wing, his protection.

It just didn't make _Beckett_ safe.

An untenable situation. Bearing fruit right this moment, as Black moved to set up the infusion.

Something had to give.

* * *

Kate was awake. Aware, even, which she realized was a big deal - a step in the right direction.

But she felt like shit. And the catheter itched.

The chelation required a catheter because the only way to get rid of the heavy metals in her bloodstream was through urination, and if that wasn't awful and humiliating enough, Black kept fucking _testing_ it.

She'd been through one round already and Black was setting up a second. Castle was close by, taking care to inspect the vials before Black put them in the IV bag, even though what he might be inspecting them for, Kate had no idea. He probably didn't either.

Black had that insufferable look on his face that, had Kate been more put together, stronger, she'd have said something snappy and smart to cut him down to size. But she wasn't - not strong and not together - and mostly having Black so close made her feel like breaking down into tears.

Which was mortifying. And mortifying was better, because it meant she actually felt well enough to recognize their positions in all this rather than just being so sick and so flat-out that she couldn't open her eyes, let alone want to edge away from him.

Castle replaced Black at the head of the cot and he took her fumbling hand in his, squeezing. She hadn't realized she'd lifted her arm, seeking him; it had been completely unconscious a move.

Black slid out of her sight, back to the darkness in the kitchen and the blue glow of his laptop.

"Hey," Castle murmured. "How're you doing?"

"Tired," she admitted. "Makes me feel run over."

"But not sick?"

"Not any more." Not since the dialysis part had stopped, removal of her blood to have it fucked with before put back in her body. Apparently Logan hadn't been too much in favor of that move, though Threkeld had said it might work, and then Castle had allowed Black to go ahead with the chelation-dialysis two-punch in the hopes that it would keep her from dying.

Well, she wasn't dead. Improvement.

"You feel okay, though?"

She chewed on her lip, thought about lying.

"Kate."

"No," she cracked, heard herself, the terror riding in her voice. She lifted a hand and pressed it to her eyes, tried to swallow it down.

Castle didn't try to touch her, thank goodness, didn't even hover. She needed a moment, and he at least knew that much.

Kate took a breath, a deeper one right after it to prevent herself from hyperventilating, and then she let it out slowly.

After a second more, Castle circled his fingers around her wrist and withdrew her hand from her eyes. She opened them in surprise, stared up at him.

"Do you want to sit up?"

"What?"

"Sit up with me," he urged. "We have things we need to talk about. In confidence."

That jolted a little adrenaline through her bloodstream, pumped her heart. Castle shot a look to the monitor and gave her a frowning concern, but she waved him off.

"Sit me up," she told him. "I can do it."

"Against me," he warned, but he was already moving her in place. Castle got his hip to the cot and his arm around her upper back and shoulders; when he moved, it was fast enough to keep her from feeling every shifting ache of her body.

And then she found herself half-reclining against his chest, her cheek mashed to his collarbone. His breath sighed out across the top of her hair and he scraped it back behind her ear to keep it from falling in her face.

"What're we talking about?" she started.

Castle was fingering the sleeve of her sweatshirt, smoothing his thumb over the knobby bones of her wrist. "Talking about Black. I need your input."

It was disgusting how _good_ it made her feel to hear him say he needed her. Damn, but that was desperate, and more than a little pathetic.

And she did wonder if Castle was asking on purpose, knowing how she liked to be in control.

But so fucking what? She needed it. She needed to feel in control of her body, her life, if things like this were going on around her.

"Black," she said softly. "What about him?"

"I don't understand why he's doing this. Helping us. You."

"Because he wants you." She laid her palm flat to his abs and was faintly surprised by the hard core of strength lurking below the surface. Not even the at-rest give of muscle, no, this was ultimate fighter shit. "Castle, did you take the serum?"

"Yes."

She blinked, palm practically burned by his skin through the t-shirt. "Pure serum. From him. When?"

"Friday night, after we got here." Castle cleared his throat and his chin came down to rest on top of her head. "I made him. He didn't offer it. I was - too slow, Kate."

She didn't understand the tag line to that confession, but she understood the rest well enough. "You didn't make him. He was more than willing. Castle, _that_ is the key to his behavior. You know that."

"I took the injection, but there weren't any stabilizers. So - and he doesn't know this - I took a couple of your pills."

"They don't have everything you need," she said, slow-dawning horror waking in her. Too long unused, that sense of hyper-alert concern for Castle. "Castle, those pills aren't going to do it long-term. You have to take stabilizers. Have to."

"Soon as we get home. Promise. Straight to the team. You as well."

No doubt, and it did make her feel marginally better that there was a certain and immediately hoped-for end-time for this family reunion.

She realized she was struggling to stay conscious. Suddenly, just like that, she was fighting off - hard - a dark tunnel closing down her vision. "Whoa," she mumbled.

"I just want to be sure - I wish we could be sure that Black is playing this straight. That he's not fucking around with the medical stuff just because he _can_. If I could at all understand his motives..."

"You're always his motive," she said, speaking through fog. Her mouth was thick, throat thick; dizziness swamped her in seconds.

She clutched Castle's shirt, taking in a reeling breath.

"I'm not his motive this time. I mean, it's broader than that, because he's had ample opportunity to simply take me, take it all from me so that all I'd have left is him. So what then?"

What then? What then? Her head was echoing. Her body freezing, clammy under the sweatshirt but goose bumps rising on her legs were she was wearing only a pair of underwear.

The world wheeled away from her and she cried out, jerking, trying to keep her balance.

"Kate?!"

She couldn't hang on; it was spinning crazily, it was ripping her away from her hold on him.

"Kate. Kate, honey, can you hear me?"

Whoa, God, she couldn't slow it down. It was hurtling her towards the end of the world-

"Black! I need you. I need you over here right now."

She tripped and fell straight off the edge.

* * *

"Blood pressure is dropping," Castle said. His teeth were grinding as he spoke, trying like hell to remain calm, to not absolutely lose it with his father.

"I see that, Richard."

"_Why_?" he snapped. He closed his eyes for a brief instant, rebuking himself for damaging the tenuous connection they had at the _very_ time he and Kate needed Black not pissed at him.

"I don't know why. I don't know. I told you the advanced chelation therapy has only worked on one person in my entire - and vast - research experience."

He ignored that posturing and focused on Kate. "Is she bleeding out somewhere? Those arteries - were they punctured by withdrawing the lines?" In his experience, a massive drop in blood pressure out in the field meant bleeding inside, a vein they hadn't found in the bullet wound or a concussion grenade had jarred things loose that weren't supposed to be shifted.

He was trying very hard not to panic, not to tear apart the one man who might be able to help them here.

"I don't think so," Black said finally, frowning. "It isn't likely."

Beckett's blood pressure seemed to stabilize, though it was dangerously low. Could be some of that low number was normal - she was fit, healthy, an athlete in her conditioning. She might have a naturally lower blood pressure.

But not this low. And he didn't know what it meant, that flickering but stabilizing number. Beckett was still unconscious, but her lashes fluttered and her eyes moved behind her lids.

"You don't think bleeding out is likely? I think it's damn likely," Castle shot back. "You said those a-lines were too big to use but that we were making do. What if we 'made do' with-"

"Richard," his father sighed. He was watching Beckett's heart rhythm on the monitor, but he paused to look at Castle for an instant. "That was a lie."

A lie.

"I said that to put the fear of God in you, slow your-"

"You lied."

"The lines were perfectly fine. It was a good way to insist on keeping her damn still and _you _away from her. She needed to _rest_."

"She needed to rest, my ass. You lied to me about her medical care."

Black's face went from slightly bemused to certain understanding, just like that. "Richard," he warned.

"You fucking lied to me about her _medical care_."

"For her own damn benefit. To keep you from fucking hanging on her, to keep your hands off." Black waved a hand in dismissal. "Trust me or don't. I'm telling you this now because it's _not_ the lines, the arteries in her arms have not been nicked. It's something else, and we need to figure it out."

It was like a fist around his lungs, tightening. Lies. Everywhere he looked, lies. Every time he tried to trust his damn father, he ran up against his manipulations. "This is why I don't and can't trust you. Do you understand that? This is exactly why you will never see my son."

Black shot him a sidelong look, dark and determined, with those damn grey eyes. Contacts, had to be, and Castle was pissed again.

"Why did her blood pressure drop?" he got out. "If it's not internal bleeding."

"Abnormal heart rhythms," Black responded. His gaze stayed on Castle though, reassessing, calculating, and Castle deeply regretted outright stating that James would be held away from Black.

Castle knew that to be the case. Kate knew that. But they had been feeding Black a line that was not at all the truth. Manipulations of their own.

Fuck, he might have shot himself in the foot with that. He had to get it together, had to pay better attention, stop reacting and start _acting_.

He wanted to get her the hell out of here, had in fact been planning such a thing, but now that her blood pressure was hovering in unsafe ranges, he needed Black as the local authority on the damn regimen.

He'd rather have Boyd and Logan and Threkeld here with them, but he had to admit that Black _still_ knew more than their team. He'd been the program, in the beginning, injecting himself with the damn serum to his own detriment. Though the serum's lingering effects were probably what had kept Black alive after Castle had beat him half to death in that alley.

He'd intended to murder the man, and then he'd had no intentions at all, other than repeatedly putting his fist into his father's face, over and over, blood and bone, until the rage had wiped him out completely.

But he hadn't done that either, not to his satisfaction, because Kate had been right there, getting in the way, as always his better half, his conscience.

"So what happens now?" Castle said slowly. "What do we do for her?" Proactive. Be fucking proactive.

"Richard," his father sighed. "This is really very crowded-"

"Get it through your damn thick skull," Castle rasped, turning a baleful eye on his father. "She is the only reason you live. The _only_ reason. And with my son in the balance too, if she doesn't wake up, you won't live long."

"Richard, I am not an idiot. I do know that."

"Then start acting like it, you damn bastard."

Black lost it. Castle didn't see it coming, could only see Beckett and those numbers abysmally low. He didn't see it at all, he was only really focusing on how damn blind he was here - when Black lunged and tackled him.

Castle hit the floor with his head and shoulders, the air rushing from him with the blow backwards. Black got a hard fist into Castle's _neck_, immediate and choking damage, probably one of the only vulnerable spots on his super body.

And Black knew it. He put his knee into Castle's diaphragm, leveraging himself up, but Castle roared, voice broken by the hit, and wrapped an arm around his father. He got Black in a chokehold, slammed the man back to the floor. He heard Black's head hit the ground, that sick crunch, and Castle froze.

Oh, God.

He sucked in a breath that wouldn't come, dragged himself to his hands and knees, rocked back to sit on his feet, trying hard to work air in past the swelling of his throat.

He needed Black alive. Alive, damn it.

Black groaned and rolled to an elbow, a hand raising weakly to his face, covering his eyes. And then it moved slowly back to his head, a wince transforming to a growl.

"Fucking hell," Black cursed.

Castle was having trouble breathing, but he kept it to himself, not wanting to let his father see how vulnerable that punch had made him. He didn't speak, just darted a glance back to Kate on the cot, the heart monitor - it was steady at least, if not great. 120 over 80 was average, but Kate could be as low as 90/60, being healthy and fairly young, and with the added help of the supplements for the last fifteen months.

This was 80 over 55. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't great either. Not when they were in the middle of some dubious medical procedures.

"Fucking hell, Richard."

He couldn't even open his mouth to say _you fucking started it_, even though he wanted to, because his voice wouldn't be there when he did. He was still trying to keep his breaths from being too noisy and giving him away, sitting rigidly on the floor at the head of the cot while Black gingerly touched the back of his head.

His fingers came away with blood.

"She's stable as possible right now. Could be a few - fuck, my head - could be a few reasons why her blood pressure dropped, anything from low cortisol levels to sepsis. Draw her blood, we'll do another CBC and see if we can't get clues. Damn it, Richard. You've made it difficult for me at every turn. And now this."

Castle stayed silent, his nostrils flaring with the effort of breathing. His throat was dangerously swollen where Black had lashed out. Obviously he had pushed his father too far, reminiscent of a day early in his life when he'd found himself with a ringing in his ears and standing outside on a stump in the dead of winter.

He'd forgotten that his father had hit him in anger. Only twice, that he remembered now, but he _had_. Castle had gotten to him twice before, just like that, with his bitter disrespect.

He had to remember that. It was a point he could make, a vulnerable place in his father's rather 'super' psyche.

Black had been fucking with his head - and _Kate's_ \- for years now. But now Castle had been reminded that Black wasn't invulnerable to a mind fuck himself.

It made it worth the swollen throat and the difficult breathing.

But shit, he should probably grab a bag of frozen bread from the freezer and get this under control.

Wouldn't do Kate any good if he suffocated.

* * *

Her throat rasped.

That was the first thing. Burning and raw. She woke to a thirst that pushed her eyes open and had her hand reaching before she knew what.

Castle caught her fingers, and she realized her head was turned towards him, her lids slitted against the low light. He was in shadows.

"Water," she murmured, swallowing hard.

He lifted a finger and let go of her hand, stood up. She watched him but couldn't move her head on her neck to follow his exit.

She closed her eyes a moment, swallowing past the ache, licking the inside of her mouth with a dry tongue. A touch on her shoulder flared her eyes open and she stared, aware again, wondering how long that had been.

Castle had a water bottle in his hand, but hesitance had crept into his look.

She lifted a slow hand, fumbled to catch the bottle. He let her take it, but his eyebrows were knitting together.

"Help me?" she murmured. She had to sit up to swallow. A little, just a little. She knew there'd been a period of unconsciousness that she hadn't expected; she knew she'd passed out sitting against him. But she needed water.

Castle wrapped his hand around hers, cracked the seal, twisted the cap off. His fingers hesitated around the bottle.

"I'm thirsty," she said, confused by him. "That's good, right?"

Castle chewed on his lower lip, glanced up and away - presumably to where Black was. She suddenly had the thought that maybe she wasn't supposed to be drinking water, not with the chelation.

She didn't know. "Can I?" Her voice cracked and Castle's head whipped back to her, his eyes wide.

Why hadn't he said anything?

"Castle."

He grimaced and leaned in, snaked his palm under her neck and slightly, only slightly lifted her head. She had the water still shaky in her grip, but Castle used his free hand to touch the bottle to her lips. It was a slow, slow sip, the water freezing cold against her tongue, icy down her throat.

She choked and lurched forward, trying to get upright, but Castle resisted, yanking the bottle away and turning her body to the side.

She coughed up some water, panting against the metal frame of the cot, her eyes closed.

"Can't," he said, and his _voice_. That wasn't right. He sounded awful.

Kate pushed against the edge of the cot only to fall back, her grip catching Castle's arm and holding on, shaky, weak, exhausted just by the effort. Castle shook his head.

"You can't sit up," he croaked.

"What happened to you?" she whispered. Tears pushed up to her eyes but she blinked fast and released her fingers from his forearm, skated up towards his bicep. His skin was soft there, and she felt him twitch under her touch. His eyes shifted to the side, his head turned as if looking to place Black in the room, and she saw it then.

A vicious bruise across his neck.

"Castle," she cried out. His head snapped back to her and he lifted his finger to his lips, eyes desperate.

Oh, God. Oh, God, what had happened to him? Had he gone out there, had the Collective found him? She knew the police had taken the Fiat just down the street, he had told her there was some investigation going on, knocking on doors and canvassing, but had he gotten into it with them?

He lifted the water bottle, an eyebrow in question, and he helped prop her up a little. Only a little. She understood better; he didn't want her to sit all the way up.

She took another small sip, this time prepared for the shock of cold in her mouth, the _need_ for it that made her want to suck it down. She let the water roll around her teeth, along her gums, and then she swallowed.

"How's that?" he rasped. He sounded bad.

She nodded, flicked her hand and he read the gesture right, lowered the bottle to the floor. Kate caught his arm again, rubbed her fingers along his skin where it was sensitive to her touch.

He shivered and hunched in closer, but he lowered her to the cot. She laid on her back, watching him, demanding an answer to a question she hadn't spoken.

Castle laid his forehead against her shoulder and her heart twisted in concern. She managed to get her hand up to the back of his neck, the fine and soft hair there, stroking. She felt better for the water, but still exhausted, still weighed down by something she couldn't get a handle on.

"Rick," she whispered.

"Hit me," Castle cracked out. "The throat."

She clutched the back of his neck, terror rising up, but Castle was shaking his head so that she felt it against her whole body.

"No, not right. I provok-provoked it." He tried clearing his throat, but she knew it wasn't a thing inside, it was the nasty bruise on his neck. It had probably swollen. "My fault."

"No," she hissed. "Not your _fault_. Your father cannot hit you. Ever."

Castle made a noise - laughing or crying, she didn't know. But his head came up and he was looking at her like she was - crazy. Maybe he was just incredulous.

"Can't-" His voice broke and he growled, obviously frustrated by the throat. "Can't provoke him." He shook his head and closed his eyes a moment. "You need him. Need him. Can't. Not now. Not yet."

She let out a slow breath, frightened at how dizzy she was even lying down. She had to close her eyes a moment, but she tried to tighten her fingers at his arm, tried to let him know she wasn't leaving him.

"Tell me," she got out. "What happened."

"Blood pressure dropped. You - you passed out. Steadied at - too low. Still too low. You feel-?"

"Dizzy," she whispered. "Tired. Very - very tired. Throat hurts." She sighed and opened her eyes to him. "Not like yours. Tell me."

He winced, a twist of a smile. "Was - upset. I said - too much. Too honest. Said no James. And he went for me."

She couldn't keep her arm up to hold on to him, but she managed to slide her hand down to his side, fingers at his ribs. He was very warm, and she realized she was cold, even in the sweatshirt.

"Get some ice," she murmured.

"Tried. Didn't help. Made my voice - voice go numb."

She chewed on her bottom lip, surprised when it _hurt_. She licked the sore place, felt the open wound where her teeth had caught. Bleeding. Dehydrated. "Need some water."

"Oh," he croaked. But he was already lifting her again, barely, and he put the bottle to her lips. She drank down more, felt better for it actually, the bracing cold of the water.

She turned her head and he took it away, settled closer, on his elbows on the cot, his knees tucked up under the frame so that she could feel his bones in the mattress at her back.

It was comforting.

He was so close that she could shift her hand to his throat and lightly touch the discolored place. "Oh, love," she whispered. Her lips were damp now and she turned her head into him and kissed under his jaw. "I'm so sorry."

"Stop," he grunted. His voice was still cracked, but she understood. He didn't want her sympathy when she was the one unable to even sit up.

Too bad. She hurt for him. For herself too, of course. But for him.

She felt dizzy; she closed her eyes and tapped her fingers at the side of his neck, reassuring him that she was still here, still with it. "What comes next?" she murmured.

Castle painfully cleared his throat, then sipped some of her water himself. When he answered, his voice cracked here and there, sometimes the word dropped out entirely, but she knew what he was saying. "One more round of the infusion once your blood pressure goes up. Thinks your heart might have been damaged, but - actually - having regimen in your system at such high levels might be helping. Might be - rebuilding heart muscle. So the strange potassium imbalance, all that."

She let out a breath and palmed his neck, rubbed her thumb under his jaw. She was so tired; she wouldn't be able to stay much longer with him. "Thirsty," she murmured, but what she meant to say was _tired_.

"Here, hon." She took another sip, her head angled up by his grip, and then she realized her eyes were still closed.

"Gonna sleep," she sighed.

"Please," he whispered. His voice sounded bad; he looked beaten down and she didn't like that at all. But she couldn't stay; she was being dragged under.

"Love," she mumbled, but she wasn't sure he heard it.

His kiss on her forehead was the last thing she felt.


	9. Chapter 9

**Close Encounters 22**

* * *

Black came in fast and shut the door, slamming it so hard that even Kate, unconscious, twitched on the cot. Castle stood up, keeping his body between Beckett and his father, but Black merely leaned against the door, looking rattled.

"What's happened?" Castle rasped. His throat still ached, but while Black had been out, he'd applied more ice to the bruise and it had helped. "Black, what's going on?"

"They're going door-to-door. Here. This block."

Castle swallowed hard past the thickness in his throat. "You wiped down the Fiat, didn't you?"

"Of course."

"But?"

"News isn't reporting this, but the police know - know it was the van who picked you up in the park."

Castle rubbed his hand at his jaw, glanced over his shoulder to look at Beckett on the cot. The heart monitor was steady, blood pressure low but stable. "And they've connected the dots to the Fiat. That's what you're saying."

"Most likely. No other reason to be going door-to-door in a neighborhood like this. Not for a stolen car."

"Shit," Castle breathed. His voice broke and he turned back to Kate, staring at her a moment just to keep it together. He had to remain calm, plan their next move. "Will they come to this apartment?"

"They may knock. They're just now entering the building. Others on this hall might inform them it's an unoccupied apartment, but I don't know how cooperative people here are going to be with the police."

"Wouldn't that make them more likely to force their way in?" Castle said, trying to think it through. He glanced back at Kate, but there was just no way to move her. They really couldn't move her. It was too fragile.

"Yes. Exactly," Black said. "We need to leave. We'll have to split up - go our own ways now. They're looking for-"

"No," Castle said quickly. "No splitting up."

"Think about it. I've done what I can. It's up to her to recover or not. It's time to-"

"No. What if she needs... something I can't give her?" His heart was in his throat, saying it out loud like that. He hoped his father attributed his hoarseness to the livid bruise across his neck. "No splitting up. We have to find another way."

"There aren't any other ways left to us," Black said. He was struggling for dispassion, Castle could see, struggling as hard as Castle himself was, both of them entirely too used to resolving problems with violence. Extreme violence.

"Then think of something," Castle said. "If they go door-to-door, we can't - we cannot - shoot our way out of this. We can hide out in here. We can-"

"Son, whose fault do you think this is? You shot and killed my only contact in the Collective. Now you have both them and the international police after you. That's the kind of fuck-up that happens when you make it emotional. So you tell me, Richard, what exactly do you think we can do here?"

That was rhetorical, obviously, because Black huffed and pushed up from the door. The apartment was close quarters, and he shoved past Castle and into the kitchen, dousing the hurricane lamp as he went.

"Why did you-"

"No light. Use your phone if you need it. Mute the heart monitor so there's no noise while you dismantle it."

"There's no need to panic. We can hide out," Castle said. He was turning to the monitor and thumbing down the volume. Not too much, just enough so that it couldn't be heard from the hall. He wouldn't take it apart. "We could wait until they leave."

"Hiding _out_ isn't going to work. Like you said, if they consider it unoccupied, they'll come in looking for us. We have to leave here. Unless, as I suggested, you come up with something better. Something _not _driven by your damn broken heart. You've made a fucking mess of it, Richard; time to clean up."

"It's not _my _mess," Castle growled. But all the authority had drained out of his voice. He glanced at Kate to reassure himself, regain his confidence. "It's not my mess. It started with you. You got emotional about your son - from the beginning you've controlled it all, and once I was out of your control - don't tell me _that's _not emotional - once I figured it out, you took action to get me back. And now _this_ is the consequence. It's not my decisions that have put us here; it's yours."

His father studied him for a long moment and then turned his eyes to Kate, a calculating glance that made Castle's blood run cold. His throat ached with everything he'd said, and the darkness surrounding them was just deep enough that Castle couldn't figure out what Black's look was about.

"You're afraid," Black said. "You're afraid she'll die. But this is all that can be done for her. Keep doing the chelation for the next - I'd say a week-"

"No," Castle said, clenching his fists. "We are not splitting up. You are coming with us."

"Richard, don't be stupid. I'll teach you how to do the chelation infusion, what to look for, how to keep from killing her with it. You'll need to travel fast, so make her do more than she thinks she can - she's always going to give you more than she ought to anyway - and then let her crash when you get to a secure location. I'd suggest Rome."

Castle wasn't about to tell the man they had a different place, that they'd ditched the Rome apartment the moment they could.

But they weren't going to Florence either. Not right now. "She can't be moved," Castle said. "And you're not going anywhere." He put his hand behind his back and drew his new weapon carefully, leveling his gaze on his father, the gun pointed at the floor.

"You're a damn fool. The police are coming _in_ this building. They _will_ find a way past this door, and they'll probably put guards on the block. I'll slip out on my own, just an old man on his way to the corner store, and you leave after me. You know how to get past them; you'll just have to do it."

He did. But he'd have to carry Kate - and she wasn't even able to _sit up_ without passing out. Fuck.

"You need to go now, Richard. There's very little time."

"You're coming with us. I'm not letting you out of my sight," Castle said. He kept a careful eye on his father, the gun speaking more than his own words. "She needs professional medical help, and you're all we've got."

Black was thinking; he could see his father working through every angle. He wasn't taking his father to Florence, no, but they _could_ go to the Rome apartment. Which would be close to safety in Florence when Kate was finally through the worst of it.

They could go anywhere, really. Just so long as it wasn't here.

"Together," Black said finally. There was a sick satisfaction in his voice that made Castle do a head check, trying to unravel whatever motivations and manipulations he had walked right into.

His father had _wanted_ him to insist on not splitting up.

Castle frowned. But he didn't see any other way. They couldn't stay when the police were right outside the door.

Wait. "Show me," he rasped. His throat was killing him, despite the super in his blood. "Show me the police. First. Right now."

Black's face changed, a subtle thing but there anyway. And _not_ the usual tic Castle saw when Black wanted to _allow_ him to see his emotions. This was outside of his control, and he wasn't happy.

"Show me the police in the building."

Black hesitated a moment too long.

"You're a fucking asshole," Castle growled, rocking on his heels with the gun in his hand. When Black had lunged at him before, the gun had been at his back, hidden by the hooded sweatshirt he'd bought for himself, trapped under his own body as he'd gone down. But he had it now, and the gun in his hand restrained whatever was brewing in his father's face. Restrained them both, actually, reminded them of what was at stake here.

"We're not splitting up. We're not going anywhere," Castle rasped. "We stay right here."

The police _had_ found the Fiat, but they weren't going door-to-door in this building. They were canvassing the neighborhood, sure, but it wasn't as dire as all that.

But it did make Castle wonder why Black was straining so hard to get away from them. Or was it that Black had wanted to manipulate Castle into a new location, gain the upper hand once more?

Castle leaned over and flipped the volume up again on the heart monitor. "We stay here. She's not stable. You get over here and you do it right. Chelation's scheduled in twenty more minutes."

Black's jaw worked, glittering glare, but he walked stiffly towards him. Castle stepped back, the gun still at this thigh as he watched his father.

His own damn father. Fuck. It was getting to Castle when he'd thought, a long time ago, that he'd killed and buried the last of whatever child-pathetic notions he'd had for needing the man.

His own father. Turned out that damn five year old was _still_ standing out in the snow on a stump, bewildered tears freezing in his eyelashes, unable to understand why the father of his dreams hated him so much.

Fucking hell. And worse - he had to call _Kate's_ father, the man who did love him, the man who had been the father to him his own had never been. He had to call Jim Beckett and tell him what had happened.

They definitely weren't making their flight home. They'd be sitting here for a while.

* * *

Black left again. Castle let him this time because he knew, he was certain now, that Black wasn't looking to separate. He wanted to be right here. For good or for evil, Castle didn't know, but he could be sure that Black was hoping to pick up the pieces whatever happened. Castle's pieces, the moment Kate died.

Kate wouldn't dying; she wasn't going to die. He was determined. _She_ was determined.

But that meant they had to hunker down here for a while longer; they needed supplies - food, ammunition, information. Black was going out to get those things, and Castle let him because they were really walking a fine line here.

If he outright threatened his father, Black would hold Kate's health over his head. If he outright restrained Black, then his father might refuse care.

So Black left, and Castle used the time to make a call.

When the video chat connected, Jim was on the couch in his own apartment - and James was with him.

"Hey, kid," Castle said weakly, his heart in his throat. He hunched over the phone, watching his son chew on his fist as he sat in Jim's lap. At least James was too little to be upset, at least he couldn't know that his parents were breaking promises to him already.

"Hey, you don't look so good," Jim said. His hand came protectively over James's head and then down to the baby's torso, spreading wide and keeping him in place. "What's going on?"

"Our mission went sour. I shot our contact. Kate is - the regimen caught up with her. She collapsed and I had to - there wasn't time for anything else. I took her to my father."

Jim's face blanched. On his lap, the baby tilted his head back and splayed those wet fingers over Jim's own hand, trying to get his attention. Castle struggled to breathe past the ache in his throat, tried to look confident. He wondered if he was failing as miserably as he thought he was.

"She's not okay," Castle admitted. "But she's getting there. Doing chelation therapy to get rid of the heavy metals that have built up in her body. It's from those pills. Black is... ah, monitoring her levels and adjusting intake and outtake so that we don't end up..."

"Killing her," Jim said. His eyes were dark - but not hollow. At least there was that. Jim had learned how to grieve without hurting the ones around him who depended on him. James would be safe there, with his grandfather, James would at least have him.

"We're coming home," Castle insisted. "When we can. The timetable's unknown. The moment she can travel, we'll leave here. Soon as the treatment looks like it's working, then we'll do the chelation on the road."

"Chelation. I've heard of it before."

"Used for toxicity. It's a kind of therapy, takes some time, using different agents to bind to the build up of metals. I can already see a difference. There's hope, Jim, I promise you that. And you know Kate."

"I know Kate," Jim murmured.

There was a long pause where Castle could see her father struggling with it, not wanting to upset James, not wanting to give in to grief. And then he lifted his head and the look - even through video chat - was determined. Strength in it. Like his daughter.

"I was gonna go to the cabin this week, get the place ready for the season. I don't think I should leave him with Carrie even for a few nights. He'll come with me to the cabin. You mind?"

"No, sir, that's fine. But if you need someone there - you just ask. Even Javier will baby-sit."

Jim cracked a smile, fast, failing, but there, and it made Castle feel better. Her father had never blamed him for a thing, not once, not even when he knew he deserved it. He so deserved it this time. But still Jim was good to him.

Castle hunched over the phone's video link. "James," he called. The boy's head swiveled to the screen and his arms came up, fists opening and closing, his _pick m up_ demand. "Hey, kiddo. Wish I could. But we'll be back as soon as we can."

The fist went back in his mouth, a grin coming around it. He looked curious about the phone interaction, and he reached for it with those slobbered fingers. Jim held it away, wrapping his arm around James to keep his hands from the phone.

At least James was too young to know. If they didn't - when it took longer than it should, the baby didn't know any different.

And if she didn't-

"Richard," a voice called.

He stiffened, realized the door had opened quietly while Castle had been absorbed with the video call. His father was back. "Jim, I gotta go. Thank you. I'll message you when I know more." He ended the call and turned around to face his father.

Black stood arrested in the small room. "James?"

Castle froze.

Black's face opened. "He... looks like you."

"He looks like Kate," he said stiffly.

There was a dark undercurrent in the room, things being said and not said, threats and promises that felt like threats. It made Castle's fingers itch for the gun.

But Black only closed the front door, turned the key in the lock. When he was done, he moved towards the small table in the room. "You'll prepare the chelating agent," his father said then. "Last treatment for today, and then she'll need to rest the next 24 hours."

Black sat down at the table, pushed vials out towards him.

Castle stood a moment more, phone in his hand, that connection to his son and Jim still heavy on his shoulders.

And then he went to the table and followed his father's instructions, both of them ignoring the ghost of James's existence that haunted the room.

* * *

Kate woke when the needle slid under her skin.

She gasped, pain traveling straight into to her bones, but Black was fast and held her down by her shoulders, his elbows pressing into her collarbone. Her eyes rolled to Castle, saw him with the needle in her elbow, and the _sorry sorry sorry_ on his face and she tried to calm down. She tried to not let it get to her. When had she ever been afraid of needles? But Black was instructing Castle on how much to push it out over time in that low and dark voice, and Black was holding her down, and her palms were sweating.

And the damn heart monitor ratted her out.

Black glanced away from Castle's work and their eyes met. He studied her like a specimen, an interesting experiment, and she knew - oh God - she knew he could do whatever he wanted to her. And he didn't know which way it was going to go. He didn't know if he really should save her life or not. If he should help them at all.

His elbow rolled against her shoulder and his forearm was right at her neck. He was undecided. All it would take to kill her was a blow to her throat just like he'd done to Castle, make her esophagus swell up until she asphyxiated.

"Castle," she croaked, eyes skittering to him.

"Black," he snapped. He muscled his father aside - easily, so easily - even as he held the syringe in one hand. "Kate, it's me. It will only be me from now on. But you can't jerk; you have to stay still. You have to be calm."

She saw Black hovering to one side, watching them, and she nodded, but the heart monitor still jumped. Castle leaned in over her, blocking her view of his father and she sucked in a ragged breath, her lungs still unwilling to work. The needle was in her arm, stuck in her arm, but Castle had paused.

"It's just you and me," he whispered at her temple. "You and me, Kate. We can do this together. He won't touch you anymore."

"Castle," she whispered tightly. She was trying not to cry but the tears leaked out of her squeezed-shut eyelids.

"Look at me, love," he said. He kissed her eyelids, softly, one a time. "Please, Kate. It will help if you just look at me. Please."

She pried open her eyes and saw his face filling her vision. Her chest was heavy with lead but he looked so afraid. She knew her panic wasn't helping him at all. "I'm okay."

"God, you're not okay," he whispered. His eyes were bleak; he looked so much worse than he had when she'd fallen asleep. His throat shadowed with bruises, his face breaking apart - all her fault.

"Will be. Be okay," she rasped. The needle burned; her eyes burned.

He came in so close that his mouth brushed her nose. "Please don't leave me."

"Won't. I won't. I'm here," she promised. Stupid, foolish promises, but Castle himself had taught her that. "You and me."

He shifted back and glanced down to the crook of her arm. "It's through. It's done. I - need him to show me how to cap it off and keep the line open."

"Okay," she said.

"You're okay?"

"I'm - yeah. Just, stay close. He - he still can't decide."

"Can't decide?"

"If he wants me to live."

* * *

He could see her eyes were still open. The hurricane lamp was still off, in case the neighbors saw the light, Castle supposed, or perhaps just giving credence to Black's lie that the police were going door-to-door.

Kate was still awake.

He was on the floor beside the cot, trailing his fingers over the ghost of her skin, the blue veins in her arm below the IV port. They'd had to make a stable line for later infusions, but he was being careful to keep it clean. Her head was tilted to watch his fingers play.

"You sleep if you want," he murmured.

"No."

"You're safe. I won't let him-"

"You're not," she rasped. Her fist released when his fingers trailed close, so he dipped down into the valley of her palm, settled his hand over hers. She took a slow breath and shifted.

"What are you - don't move, Kate. Just-"

"I wanna see you," she mumbled. "Your throat."

"Just bruised."

"You sound rough."

"I feel pretty rough," he admitted, trying to smile. She got her shoulder under her, got her hips turned on the cot. She left her arm out with the IV port closed, but there was still the catheter and the bag attached. Shit, she had to be careful. She made him anxious, moving around, but she kept her fingers clasped lightly around his.

"I'm gonna be okay," she said. "I feel better already."

"You do." He didn't believe her. She wouldn't meet his eyes.

"You can be sure of me," she said, and it looked like those weren't the words she'd meant to say. Kate frowned, a faint shadow between her brows that she couldn't seem to hold. She had to be exhausted. "I love you. I love - love our son. I'm not _going_ anywhere."

"I know," he choked out. He couldn't help leaning his forehead into hers, the slope of her nose butting his, awkward but good. "I know you want to."

"It's just - just damn panic attacks," she muttered. But he heard the plea in her voice; she wanted that to be true as well. "Once I'm stronger, they'll stop. It's just-"

She didn't finish that but he knew what came next. "Him," he said. "Black. Having him here. I understand, Kate, fuck, do I understand. He makes me panic too."

She huffed, but now he could hear the way she breathed, the heaviness in her exhalations. He caught the back of her neck with a hand and leveraged her onto her back, his forearm pressed to her shoulder.

"No, I don't-"

"Please, just sleep. Please, Kate."

She was fighting it; he didn't know if it was for him that she was trying to stay awake or because of Black somewhere out of her view. But she couldn't do that. She needed to rest.

"You've got sleep, rebuild. Let the chelation do its thing, and you don't antagonize it by moving around."

"You'll stay?" she mumbled. Her eyes were already slipping closed; he could tell she hadn't meant to say that, to sound so pathetic, but it was the one thing - the only thing - that he could actually do for her.

"I'll stay. Right here. My hand won't leave yours."

"Good," she sighed. "That's good."

He watched every flux of her face until she was drowned in sleep. But he didn't dare let go of her hand. One last round of treatment and then twenty-four hours off, and they'd see where they were.

If anyone could survive, it was Kate Beckett.


	10. Chapter 10

**Close Encounters 22**

* * *

Going on eight hours now since the last round of dialysis, and Beckett was still asleep. Castle was glad for that, because he had the idea his demeanor was making her feel worse, hovering at her side like a sad ghost.

She didn't need to see that.

Black had fallen asleep sitting at the kitchen table, and no wonder. It was going on seventy-two hours since they'd escaped Luxembourg Garden, though Black might have been crawling off to find a hole to sleep in during one of the times he'd left the apartment for supplies.

But he was asleep now, and Castle was standing down from red alert, still working at full capacity but no longer seeing Death in every heartbeat. Kate did actually look better, even in the pale light of his cell phone, and he thought it might be a good idea to call her father again when she woke, reassure Jim - give him a chance to say to her - for her to say - what needed to be said.

Not good-bye. Never good-bye. But Jim deserved their consideration.

Castle stood up from the cot, slipping his fingers from hers, certain she was deeply asleep. And Black was as well, so he stayed quiet, stepped around the cot towards the blacked-out window. He hadn't cared before, had only seen it as a closed circuit in the loop of their apartment hideout - the newspaper in the windows and the aluminum foil taped across it was simply a check mark in the security category.

Now he peeled back the crusted masking tape and took down a corner of the newspaper, blinded by the sudden sunlight streaming inside. He made a careful triangle in the window and leaned in against the sill, getting his bearings.

When he'd gone out for their clothes and the gun, he had headed west, away from this side of the complex, and used the signs around him to find what they'd needed. The drug dealers on the street corner five blocks from here had made their way to higher-level suppliers, who had in turn gone to two-bit dealers. Far enough away that Castle had felt confident to take the gun from the idiot and not bring the dealers back on them here at the apartment.

He scanned the streets now, watching afternoon in Charleroi, Belgium, studying the traffic patterns and the pedestrians, the poverty-stricken neighborhood in its element.

Except he didn't see what he would expect. No old men playing chess on their porches, no clusters of disreputable youths, none of the young adult males dipping in and out of apartments on gang errands. The women weren't out there either, which wasn't that strange, but the kids.

The kids were gone.

School was out, they should be scattered about the grounds like a flock of birds. He'd heard them - yesterday? two days ago? - he'd heard them out there, screaming, shrieking, playing.

But nothing.

Now he was worried.

Black had been lying when he'd said the police were going through the complex door-to-door. It was subsidized housing, or perhaps outright government housing; in between the vast network of apartment complexes were wide ranges of metal fence over ten feet high. They were used to keep suspects from running, their knowledge of the housing development giving them an edge over the police.

Cops were prevalent; their cars patrolled frequently. The stolen Fiat couldn't have been tracked to this one specific complex, not when they were surrounded by pockets of gangs and organized criminal outfits who probably would be investigated first.

But the quiet out there...

The silence spoke volumes.

Castle pressed the newspaper back to the window, his eyes adjusting quickly to the darkness. He made sure the tape caught and held the glass, and then he pushed an empty water bottle into the sill against the newspaper - the tape wasn't as sticky as it could be.

He shifted past the cot, glancing down to check the heart monitor, her blood pressure. Steady, holding steady if low. He brushed his fingers across her cheek and she didn't even twitch.

So he took the keys and unlocked the front door, slipped outside to see for himself what had spooked the neighborhood.

His gut told him it was bad.

* * *

Castle pushed his hands into the pockets of the hooded zip sweatshirt, kept his head down. He didn't attempt to pull the hood up, that was sure to have him scrutinized by whatever was out here, but he did keep his walk to the shadows of the buildings.

It took longer than it should have. He was criss-crossing complexes, moving in and out of junkyard backyards, along routes that the shadier elements obviously used. Well-worn paths in the brown grass, his feet crunching through dead weeds and broken glass and dirty diapers.

Castle paused at the corner of a building when the rusted vehicle came into view. He wasn't sure why he'd taken note of it; the car looked like the yards and the apartments, half-broken down, permanent fixtures.

A man was asleep behind the wheel. Supposedly asleep. There was that. There was also the strange feeling that the car was more threatening than anything else on this block.

Guys slept in their cars, that was true. Gang members protected their rides by appointing a lesser member to sit watch, also true.

But drug dealers and gang bangers in the projects - even in the projects of Belgium - didn't own beaters. They went for flash. They intimidated with style and chrome and rims; they had status symbols.

Not rusted-out hunks of scrap.

Castle stayed in the shadows, his sweatshirt catching on the brick of the apartment complex. He studied the landscape, the dead calm center of the storm that was that damn vehicle.

Not police, no. The cops set up obviously in unmarked cars that had been bought through government subsidies - the European equivalent of a Ford Taurus, usually. Or the detectives came in with their BMWs, dusty and well-traveled, decades old.

This guy, faking sleep behind the wheel, was enough of a professional to attempt not attracting notice. He was doing everything right - blending into the landscape, using common practices, making no untoward movements.

If it weren't for the long-held silence in this neighborhood, the caution and carefulness of the whole community, Castle's awareness wouldn't have been piqued. His attention might not have been caught at all.

But for the wariness.

He was inordinately grateful to his father for choosing a location that, at first glance, had seemed entirely too dangerous for a crippled old guy, a woman who needed medical attention, and a big white guy who screamed cop. But it was ideal. It was more than ideal, because that very neighborhood of thugs and gangsters had warned them something was wrong.

A stranger in their house.

Castle knew he couldn't stay long studying this guy, but he took note of what he could. The car was most likely armored, the windows had that warp that meant bulletproofed. The 'rust' was strategically placed; Castle assumed he had a semi-automatic or an automatic rifle poised on his lap to shoot through one of those holes. The trunk was reinforced as well, plated welded to the sides as if to replace portions that had been rusted out.

This man was a professional. Not the police, not even Interpol, but someone trained. Someone with covert skills. Someone who would know, instinctively, that he was being watched and he would watch right back.

Someone specialized.

Looking for them.

Castle sank back behind the building and scanned the apartments rising above him. Every window was occupied, curtains or plants or silent AC units. But he might be able to talk his way in, sit watch for a few hours, observe the car. Might.

Or the guy in the car had already talked his way in, and he had observers up there right now.

Fuck.

Castle hurried off, already convinced.

They didn't have much time.

* * *

She woke to arguing, confused by the rasp and rattle of angry voices. She stayed swirling in the dark dizzy dreams, but she knew Castle's voice. He was upset. She couldn't place the words in the right order, not quite, but he was - torn.

Alternatives. A decision was being made, or delayed, and she needed to be awake for this. She had to make him do what was right, what saved him, them, what kept them safe despite her.

"Castle," she husked. Her voice sounded weighed down. She felt the darkness sitting on her chest, wanting to sink her back to nothing. "Castle."

She wasn't loud enough. They were arguing. She heard _until the Collective is right outside your door_ but there were no facts, nothing in evidence. Old argument or new?

"Castle," she called out.

The voices stopped; she heard his feet on the floor as he came to her. She realized her eyes were closed and opened them, struggling.

"Castle, what."

He dropped down to her side, on the balls of his feet that way, ready, and she pushed her hand across the cot to hit his knee, touch and connection. He was still hesitating to tell her everything.

"What is it," she said again. Not even a question, just the prompt to get him going.

"We have surveillance," he sighed. "About four blocks down. Quiet, but definitely armed."

"One man?" she asked, trying to think. Trying to gather enough of herself to _think_.

"That I could tell. Might be a partner in the apartments. Might be. Or to relieve him. Old car, but built for a siege."

"Stationary surveillance," she mumbled. She had to close her eyes, the weight of sleep was so hard to fight. A man watching, a man in a car built for a siege. Not good. "When do we go?"

"No," he said.

She sucked in a longer breath, opened her eyes again. She needed him to look at her, but he wasn't. He was staring over his shoulder at Black, she assumed Black, the fight she'd heard.

"Yes. Move. We can't stay with him out-"

"We go to ground, Beckett. Those are the rules of engagement. He's hunting his quarry and we go to ground."

From the corner, Black's voice came, strong and certain. "And then he's got us treed. No, she's right. We have to move."

"She can't _be_ moved."

"I can move-"

"No," he shouted. He turned back to her, that furious blue grief. "No." Softer now. "No, Kate. It's not viable."

She thought about it; she was trying not to be stupid, trying not to cause that grief. She curled her toes and assessed her body. "I could-"

"No. You can't."

"You could carry me out," she said. It was true; he was super. But to have Black as their defense...

"I need my hands free," he said. Intent, deadly. He wasted no time in letting them all know what he felt about having Black as his right-hand. She didn't blame him.

"We just wait?" she said back. She turned her head on the cot, caught him staring back at his father. "Rick."

His head whipped around to hers, startled blue eyes. She never called him that; she didn't know why except for the power of it. She didn't want to waste it, abuse it, the intimate call of his name.

"We can't stay here," she whispered. "We can't. Not if they've narrowed down their search to this block. We'll be stuck. We'll need supplies eventually, food. The police found the stolen cars; we need to get entirely out of this area. We have resources, Castle. Don't forget that we have _friends_."

His mouth opened, closed again. She could see that she'd budged his stubborn insistence that he alone was right, moved him just enough to consider a new angle.

"Friends," he murmured.

"People out there who owe us favors, at the very least."

"We don't know who is Collective, who isn't," he said, but his words didn't hold the same conviction. He was considering it.

Black came into her line of sight, suddenly and silently, like a snake. "I have people. I _know_ who is and isn't Collective."

Castle's face shut down. Kate glared at Black, let him know it was his own damn fault, that she'd been getting somewhere with him and Black had ruined it. "Just shut _up_, would you?"

Castle gave her a startled look, a flicker of amusement in his eyes, and at least there was that. She'd take it. She tried hooking her fingers at his knee, but she didn't have the strength.

"Tactics, Rick. Think about it tactically. We're under fire, what do we do?"

"Create a diversion," he said immediately, tilting his head. "Okay. I - we might. But we're going to be obvious the second we step out of this building, Kate."

"So we figure out a way not to be obvious."

Castle looked at her, then glanced back to his father. No one said anything - no one had a clue how to accomplish that. Kate and her medical equipment, Black and his strange gait, stranger face, Castle with a gun, most definitely he would be armed...

"It's going to be obvious we're doing a fast evacuation," Castle sighed. "I can't think of a diversion big enough to cover that. Besides, what car are we going to use? We steal another car and we're just giving the police - and the Collective - an entirely straightforward path right to our front door."

Kate grimaced. That was true. They had no transportation. "The train? A sleeper car would-"

"And how do we _get_ to a train station?" Castle gruffed. "You're not walking. I'm not carrying you out of here when we've got Collective agents right outside our door. Plus, you need medical care, Kate. You need a fucking ambulance."

Kate closed her eyes, but she couldn't deny any of it. She really didn't have it in her to _sit up_, let alone walk to a train station, let alone get on board without collapsing. The sway and movement of the train - just thinking about it made her sick.

"Actually," Black said slowly. "I might have an idea. We can get an ambulance."

* * *

There was fighting, there had been fighting, she was sure, but once Castle had tipped towards leaving this apartment, once Kate had been certain he'd do the right thing even if it was hard, she had fallen unconscious.

Drifted, at least. She was drifting. She heard arguments; she heard silence and the key in the door, opened her eyes to find Castle pacing the apartment alone. She had fallen asleep again and stayed that way for what she thought was a long time, and then the hurricane lamp was over her face.

She opened her eyes and saw Black and Castle standing just before the door, another argument. Logistics, she was sure, but there would be an ambulance, Castle was saying. There must be an ambulance. She drifted again, but couldn't quite fall back to sleep because the light was on her face and she didn't know if she could push the darkness all the way off, but she was aware, at least.

Marginally aware.

They were going to be at loggerheads, she knew, for the whole mission. However long it took. She couldn't remember what day it was, only that at some point she had known, and the knowing was heavy behind her eyes so that she thought she might be crying.

It was important to know the day. It was vital. She didn't know why - she wasn't taking those pills, no more pills, she wasn't on schedule for feeding-

James.

She must have made a noise because both men stopped, instantly, and Castle was crashing to his knees beside the cot and cupping the side of her face.

"Kate. God, what's wrong?"

She was trying to open her eyes but she thought that might be a bad idea, very bad idea, that it might actually let everything out that shouldn't be. Not when Black was standing close.

She turned her head away from Castle's hand and into the rough abrasion of the limp pillow. She didn't open her eyes, but she struggled to answer him, reassure him. "Just tired," she finally choked out. The words came out like they ought to, in the right order, and she gave a sigh of relief that went on entirely too long, making it almost impossible to fill her lungs again.

"Kate?"

"Day is it?" she whispered. She had to know, had to find out just how long, how many nights he'd gone to bed without her.

"Hey, hey, Kate, honey, don't cry. You're okay, you're getting better."

"What day?" she said, trying to clear her throat. She opened her eyes to make him say, make him tell her, and the tears fell all the way out and burned down and back behind her ear into her hair. "How long?"

"It's Monday - late."

She closed her eyes. They had been destined for home on Monday morning, at the latest. Tonight would be the first broken promise, the first night she wouldn't come home, _Castle_ wouldn't be home. "I'm tired," she said again, trying to explain, trying not to make Castle feel worse.

"Please don't cry, sweetheart. I hate to say it, but you don't have the electrolytes and fluid to lose."

She laughed, shocked into it, eyes flying open to look at him. He smiled back, widely, pleased with himself and probably her as well. The port was closed in her elbow, though still uncomfortable, but she could crook her arm and touch the side of his face, fingers trailing back to his ear. She tugged. Lightly, all she could manage, and Castle - sweet, heart-breaking - nudged his cheek into her touch.

She smiled back at him, making promises to herself, to him, that it wouldn't be long now. It wouldn't. She wouldn't keep him from his son, she wouldn't keep _herself_ from her son; they would get home.

"I called your dad," he whispered. "He knows it might be - a while. They're going to the cabin."

"Oh," she breathed. "Oh, I'm so sorry you had to do that."

"He deserves the truth," Castle said, frowning, eyebrows knit.

Her eyes still burned, and she blinked rapidly to keep it back. But now the crook of her arm hurt and she dropped her hand to the bed, her throat feeling raw. She swallowed, the tender places were scratchy, and her eyes still burned, and suddenly, she smelled it too.

"Castle," she rasped, eyes wide, darting to the door. Black was there and fumbling into his pocket for a phone; he stared at it. His eyes darted up and met hers, then shifted to Castle.

"What?" he said, half-rising.

And then he must have sensed it too, smelled it, and he cursed, jerking for the front door even as Black did as well.

Smoke. There was smoke. The room was tinged with it, and she could smell now the odor of burning things.

* * *

Before he quite knew what was happening, smoke alarms were blaring harshly overhead. He turned on his father, jabbing a finger his direction.

_"You did this._"

Black held up both hands to Castle's accusation, raised his voice to be heard over the shrieking alarm. "I had an associate engineer a reason to pull up an ambulance outside. You should be thanking me."

"Thank you? We're going to die in a fucking fire. I'm not-"

"I'm quite certain there's no real fire. Or if so, only a small one."

Castle growled but he went back for Beckett, hurriedly disconnecting the pulse-ox from her finger, detaching the leads for the heart monitor. She was trying to help, a shaky hand tugging the last line out from under her sweatshirt. Castle threw back the covers and her skin erupted in goosebumps, a shiver shaking her whole body.

"Sorry, babe," he murmured, a hasty kiss to her forehead when he realized she couldn't hear him over the din of the alarm. "Sweatpants," he said loudly, nodding to the plastic bag. She was shivering hard now, arms drawn in against her sides, but he shook the sweatpants out from the bag, handed them to her.

And then stopped when he realized she couldn't even dress herself. Shit. And the catheter bag. Fuck. If they'd had some kind of warning, might have been nice.

"It's _not_ a fire," his father yelled. "A few smoke bombs. I just got word."

Castle turned his head and saw Black cradling his phone, and now moving to gather up equipment. "Medical _first_," he shouted. "Forget the fucking computer. Medical equipment first."

Kate's fingers on his shoulder brought his head back to her; she had gotten turned on one side, but the catheter was hampering her efforts. Castle turned to the first aid kit still on the floor beside the cot, rummaged in it until he found the surgical tape. The drainage bag wasn't a leg bag, but he was going to have to make it into one.

"What," she said, and then stopped.

"Tape," he called back to her. The siren was grating on his nerves, setting his teeth on edge. He ignored the clamor, but his heart rate was matching its rhythm despite himself. He found his hands shaking as he taped the catheter tube against her skin to keep it in place.

She had a tight grip of his bicep as he carefully arranged the bag at her calf. He had to tape it so that the drainage wouldn't go back up the tube but allow gravity to pull it down into the bag. Kate wasn't going to be standing any time soon anyway, and in fact, if he carried her down, the bag couldn't be at her thigh or it would go the wrong direction.

Kate didn't look pleased, but that was a good sign, he thought. Now if she asked for a shower, he'd know she was feeling better.

"Pants," she said into his ear.

"Working on it," he muttered. But he snagged the waistband of her sweatpants and tugged them up her legs, avoiding the tube and the bag, trying to be careful at her waist. She had her lips pressed together when he was done, still lying flat on the cot.

She opened her eyes and her brows were knitted together, deep trouble in those brown and gold depths.

"Kate?"

She nodded; her voice wouldn't be heard over the racket of the alarms anyway. He hoped that was all it was, just discomfort and embarrassment and the irritation of those smoke alarms going off in the building.

"Hurry, Richard. He's waiting downstairs with the ambulance."

"Tell him to bring the gurney up," Castle shouted back. He sent his father an assessing look, but the man had actually packed the medical equipment, left the bags at the front door for Castle to pick up. His father likely didn't have the strength to carry them, but Castle didn't know how he was supposed to get those bags, Kate's paraphernalia, _and_ have a hand for the gun.

"He can't use the elevators."

"I don't fucking care. You _make_ him bring that gurney up."

"Richard, it's a fire alarm-"

"You said there was no fire."

Black hesitated, and Castle jumped to his feet, gathered fistfuls of Black's jacket. "What the _hell_-"

"There's no fire, no fire, Richard! But we have to _stick_ to the ruse. You carry her down. I'll bring the medical equipment with me. We fake smoke inhalation, whatever we have to do to get to that ambulance. There are fire trucks headed our way. We have to go now."

His damn father had done this on purpose so that Castle couldn't possibly have his hand free for the weapon.

But smoke bombs were still smoke bombs, and the apartment was already getting hazy, smelled noxious, and that couldn't be good for Kate either.

He turned back to the cot and found her still waiting on him. She unfurled her fingers from her palm and held her hand out to him, her eyes like a cat's in the dim glow of the hurricane lamp.

At least it was dark; the confusion would help.

Castle withdrew his weapon from his waistband at the back of his jeans and he sank down beside the cot. He placed the gun, safety on, heavy in her lap.

He didn't say anything; he couldn't compete with the raucous noise of the alarm blaring out in the hallway. He just pressed his fists into the thin mattress of the cot and slid his arms under her neck and thighs, lifted her easily up.

She clutched the weapon with both hands, cradling it in the angle her body made. Her forehead pressed to his neck and she lifted her chin.

"I got your back," she said. Quiet, but loud enough that he knew.

Black reached out for the heart monitor on its little support stand, folded it up into its case, snapped it closed. He had all the bags now, and Castle had her. Not how he'd wanted this to go, not how he'd fought his father for it to go, but Black was going to do his own damn thing just to prove he could.

Fine. They had to get out of here. No time to protest; just go.

* * *

The End of **Close Encounters 22: Win, Lose or Die**

Stay Tuned for **Close Encounters 23: Nobody Lives Forever**


End file.
